Seacave
for Richard Kerridge
Pure spooky. Unknown nature. A black maw
In limestone on a headland rounded and green-bearded
That might have stood in for the Patmos of St. Paul
Or conjured Odysseus from deep Aleppo. Even mid-channel
You could hear the furious sizzle of midsummer crickets
Droning their hoarse heat-song and timed threnody
To a noon crescendoing. I oared on towards it
As if towards some new or old narrative. Spotted it
From on high on the indigo’s stone polish
Solder-dropping small isles. Under a white ruff
Shallows melding greengage and lapis
Shimmered and dazzled. Soon it heaved up,
A black hole looming like a blank statue’s gaze or gash
On a lip of sea-depth. Inside like Lascaux
Or a medieval crypt gliding
To the mind’s awed intake. Below and unshadowy
Where the sun’s flitter could reach
The incredible pigments – mauve and maroon
And chartreuse – of barnacle-colonies. And above the same
Vaulted mossgreens and algaes. A log and a sheet of plastic
Suspended in stillness. Slight gurgling of swells
Lapping and echoing. Strange resonant place –
Pre-antiquity surely knew it, or its like. Magical cave unconscious
Meets sheltered Mediterranean glitter. I moored
The canoe in brilliant ledge-shallows, bottom leopard-shadowed
In the sun’s diamond wave-net. Water refractions
Gyrated at the mouth where black urchins spike-dotted
Submarine boulders like Cyclops’ wounded eye. The clear
Depths were pure Calypso – all ink and chalk
Olive and turquoise. Or at any rate Cousteau. Or maybe Gaia –
Pure science of stone and sea. So I dove and ate cheese and grapes
Bursting warm on the tongue. Little fry lolled at the surface
Like the brown naked body at the fallen cliff lintelled by maquis
I saw swim out like a fish goddess in an amphitheatre.
Whatever it was or is or will be, all of it,
Me enthralled these three millennia later.
Page(s) 82-83
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