Outward to a dark horizon line as keen
And aloof as the evenly moving, clean
Crest of a wave, or the edge of a gull's wing:
That pale sunset out there hasn't anything
To do with me, with its cloud whorl, its icy green;
There's nothing in the few people I've seen
To catch the eye, and take away the sting
Of the raw cold look of things; and thinking I run
Upright and briskly, I see my shadow: a tall
Pinhead aslant on stilts, going at a crawl
Along the sand; and in that room today
The neutral silence, I feeling in all I say
The desolateness of what's barely begun.
Music and after a while not listening.
I tell myself I spot every least thing
As the same, or changed, around me as I run,
And now I see, as the last third of the sun
At the horizon lays a glistening
Road to the house and reddens the west wing,
That the cliff has fallen away. The deck is gone.
There's a piece of railing stopping in mid-air
Above the expanse of raw vertical clay,
Loose dirt, iceplant, and planking sprawled down here,
Storm-loosened -- not today or yesterday.
Coming back by in the late dusk I see
The bearded young man contemplating me