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“A few days since, Messrs Heaseman and Roberts, Revenue Officers, at Rustington, seized from the Ragman Totts company of smugglers, 49 casks of cognac, brandy and geneva and lodged the same in the Arundel Custom House.”
                                           from a note, 5th November, 1787

  Rain falls into my sleep,
Around my shoes as I walk the shoreline.
  Images jolt me out of shape
  And the sound is the tide again,
Hissing at the walls of this attic room.

  Somewhere, there is a storm
And wind hitting the glass like a whip’s crack
  But the waves behind my eyes form
 The edge of a stillness. They soak
The night more thoroughly than rain; they bring

  Together lives hiding
Beneath the everyday. Through lighted
  Windows at the New Inn, trading
  Their quiet words, I have sighted
The Ragman Totts or have they conjured me,

  On the beach and in my
Turning sleep? They are here, unseen, watching
  For the ship as the mill sails lie
  Tipped in code. A voice like scratching
Says: “No revenuemen on the river.”

  And there’s no sound over
Their movement now. Downwind, I catch no more
  Talk from the Ragman Totts. Ever
  After, their landing will be mere
Scrub and grass leaning inland with the nudge

  Of night. Like this, I edge
It all on to my waking life and mop
  Dreams with the condensation. Large
  With fact, the day’s an envelope
I slip the night world into. There are floods,

  The radio says, roads
Impassable and wires down. Can they hide
  In this as behind their own words
  When they were alive? Can they shade
Themselves into nowhere as in my sleep,

  The Ragman Totts, or creep
Behind the hands of my watch? I search out
  Myself today, lying washed up
  Elsewhere, maybe from the storm. But
As I’m shaving, I can feel my face slip.