An envelope of mist up here, and a cream sea under the cliff,
Four gulls twenty feet off the geometry, vectoring,
Sea-roof patrol, slideways, nothing to report, no fish anyhow.
Somewhere down there you can hear the lighthouse singing,
Sitting under the headland, dressed entirely in pearls,
Patched into history, calling them all back, over and over.
What I like is that they thought this up, they wanted it
Enough to climb down, morning after morning, carrying stones,
And build a tower in the grey-green roar, the sloping.
Each one was dangerous, each one took years and lives.
Promising starts would wash away; so would the careless.
They did it for the drowned to be undrowned. For love, really.
Anyway sometimes after a hard day you’d get a sunset.
You could sit on the rocks and smoke a pipe,
Looking at Lundy Island, hoping for porpoises.