Alan Marshfield
The Cliff House
Do you remember the house we rented
on the Pembroke coast? Most days the slate cliffs
were wet as macs, and we drove with our child
for shelter to the cove and the small pub
with its pendulum skittles-board, slow tales
of closed workings, and its guarded welcome.
On one warm day we found a flat sand beach
and snapped each other running with our child,
one side the lucid waves, one side high ground,
an empty chamber of hill, coast and sky
or amphitheatre where the future
indulgently attended to our game.
If happiness comes from a spill of dice,
the run fell for us well that Eastertide.
We visited St David’s, Whitesands Bay,
and whether within saint’s crypt or under
surplice-albumen of cryptic heaven
we were the sole live souls, and we were graced.
And what is luck, and what is grace, if one
stupidly wish it bigger than it is?
--A day in memory that loses force
like closed works or pendulum in a loft.
If you recall that house the way I do,
although our stage is old the hills smile still.
Page(s) 111
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