SAD SEA POEM
The back-knowledge for this poem is not only that the Greek goddess of romantic love was called the surf-born, having arrived out of the waves on a shell, but also that there is an old Welsh story about two magical sons of Arianrhod, Llew and Dylan. Llew has his own story, but as soon as Dylan comes in contact with his baptismal waters, he plunges into the sea and takes on characteristics of a sea creature, moving through the seawater as perfectly as any fish, thus earning his epithet, Eil Ton ‘the son of the wave’. After Dylan died the sound of the waves around Britain’s shore was called “Dylan’s Death Groan.”
Sad Sea Poem
When they walked together here
Lovers, hand in hand
He heard the surf-born goddess’s song
As waves broke on the land.
Now she’s travelled far away
He’s here again, alone
The only sound the waves can make
Is Dylan’s sombre moan.
[cue violins]
and now an addled mind stream:
My Unmentionables
We sourced cauliflower from the under quarry of your grandmother
And he howled in the pyjamas of my loudspeaker night space memories
Of our Petrarch
And Petrarch howled sweetly with his jaguar smile
As we weeded the petunia beds next to
Humbug trousers and wellington boot poems
With our imaginary friend Joconda
Jocunda danced in the moonlight and recited the unrecitable
Which echoed down our necks like
A parched swan that is not really like a parched swan but more like
A sweaty shark. Sweaty sharks chase oiled wellington boots
Into cardboard houses on street corners where the flames of the purpose of
Housing at all are brought into beach bum questioning
Making issues where the working classes do not ask questions
And nor do we, for we have our undersea caves of a moon that is a generous udder to our
Thirsty lips and soft rolling landscapes
Milk hills and mother hills and swollen milk hills
Is our England and will be and was and is protected by lions and cows and wellington-clad
Middleclass wallops and magnas and nethers and ups and piddles and bottoms and more nether wallops
So be it and so be it and so be it forth
My door where church doors wipe the stone floors while weeping like a merry monk
Whose habit is ale and ale and ale for evermore
While Canterbury is the sweet haven of monkfish and monkfish and amen amen and
Frankincense amen
Let my dressing gown hide my unmentionables in seemly fashion henceforth and henceforth and ever-forth. Amen.