Donne Appassionate
At twilight the girls come down into the water
as the sea, outstretched, withdraws. Within the wood
each leaf twitches, and cautiously they tread back
across the sand onto the bank beyond. Only the surf
continues, away into the distance, its restless games.
The girls are afraid of the seaweed that lurks
beneath the waves, how it clutches both legs and shoulders:
so naked, after all, is the human form. Hastening upward,
they call to each other by name, keep their eyes peeled.
Even the shadows, in the dark depths of the seabed,
are enormous: they seem to flit this way and that,
as if magnetised by each passing body. The wood, then,
is something of a refuge in the setting sunlight
except the girls prefer to remain out in the open,
seated on a sheet laid cosily across the shingle.
So there they are all huddled, clasping that sheet
about their legs and contemplating the sea outspread
like a meadow in the waning light. Yet in a meadow
which of them would now dare to lie down naked?
From the sea weeds would leap, licking their feet
as an aperitif before swallowing the body whole.
Down in the sea sometimes there are eyes which flicker.
Out skinny-dipping on her own in the pitch darkness
which exists only between moons, some unnamed stranger
disappeared one night and she has never been seen since.
Big girl, they say; she must’ve also been dazzlingly white
or those eyes at the sea floor could not have reached her.
Translated by Martin Bennett
Page(s) 123
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