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ANGHARAD
Your
springboard was a sea wall, dangerous,
yet
in you dived, a needle made of light,
clean
as a drill through sluggish denim folds.
You
surfaced on an isle too far out
and
disappeared behind a splutter-fall
into
a cave or throat where glutinous
ugly
amphibians waited, twice your size,
obese
with hope they’d one day be restored
into
an army beautiful as Christ.
The
hotel windows on the esplanade
tore
up the sea light into many scribbles.
Tour
coaches, parked by the Victorian pier,
left
hourly for a countryside of oaks
where
Merlin was smeared deep beneath the bark.
It
was a careless time. We
rowed for clubs
in
beach regattas and at night got drunk
in
boat-houses on sloping shingle coasts
and
swam like hippos under a sozzled moon,
or
snogged on seafront seats, or vomited.
Some
came back from Korea. We
set up
as
salesmen, engineers, solicitors,
leaving
the home-town sea-resort behind
for
marriage and more serious affairs.
We
took up hobbies, played golf or read mags,
got
onto councils, watched the Evening News.
I
made you later out of cranky bits
of
psychobabble, myths and arty books,
a
fantasy for my receded years.
A
part of you I treacherously domiciled,
for
which I’ve paid as, frog-like in the night,
I
wait among the ghosts of croaking friends
for
your appearance through a watery veil.
Sometimes
you come, your naked long hair wet.
You
kiss my warts and go upstairs to bed.
I
wait an hour, then switch off the TV,
heartless,
unchanged, ears buzzing with the sea.
Alan
Marshfield
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