William Spencer
The Seven Sisters
Seven comely maidens
Your curves make the girls envious
As you lie with shapely haunches
Looking over the rippling sea
Observing with suitable aloofness
The comings and goings of the tides.
Could more alluring landscape
Be anywhere discovered?
Especially on suave and dulcet days
When a mantle of heat steals up
To swathe the cruelty of the sea
While the lightest of airs
Sets drifting somnolent clouds.
The seabirds swoop, acclaiming your contours
In their raucous way with salty cries;
While tourists flatter you, brandishing lenses -
Eager pilgrims from remotest rim
Of polyglot Earth, fluttering guidebooks and
Hurrying to salute your legend.
Seven sisters. Seven virgins. Seven brides?
In your white wedding dresses
Still you repel every least advance
From your promised inevitable suitor
That brutal all-conquering sea.
He’s rippling his muscles out there
Admiring himself hugely
In the mirror of the sky.
Cherish your maidenheads, my darlings.
One day he’ll eat you alive.
William Spencer’s published writings range from science-fiction short stories to an academic paper on Chaucer’s astrology. For his doctoral thesis he explored twentieth century themes, as exemplified in the many-sided writings of Aldous Huxley. This is his second appearance in Ambit.
Page(s) 25
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