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LIFE
LOVE
1
Young
muscles sweating sea-spray that dries like semen,
we
row in a sliding four past moored destroyers
and
Whale Island, on the in-tide, to the Roman Fort.
Feather
our oars back, arms shooting sternward;
twist
blades, dig in the sea, send down fine pools,
each
ratcheting up the notches of his pain
to
make a good account of Sunday morning.
2
Life
is worthy because of miraculous sap,
energy
in mind and groin, the living edge
of
competition and sardonic display.
If
there were ever an empire
coveted
once by Mediterranean bloods,
the
start was by hacking through limbs,
sorting
Gauls and Goths.
3
To
be a hermit, another ambition:
Therefore
my saint bullied hard
the
stony footways of Hampshire,
and
felt it was well that he did
so
alone, that he was alone to hear
his
footsteps clouted back
through
the cold of the year...
4
I
sailed the Dalmatian coastline
where
the suspended osprey selected a kill
and
slippery islands shone like enticing gemstones.
Night
cancelled them and I sailed from the grasp
of
feebly lamplit and deceitful ports.
An
untamed life-love drove me
to
the raw wilderness of ocean.
Alan
Marshfield
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