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Daphne Gloag

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Words and water

Laigueglia, Italy

Daphne Gloag reading Words and water 2712.6 KB
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Like our words, waves would come and come,
unfinished business. Words
and waves carried us in ease.

The buoyancy of water, the elation of light
on water were like the confidence of words
and waves, of lifted wings and limbs, in that place

of sun and salvation. We studied shadows
of ripples on the sand below, watched waves 
breaking: they ran horizontally then met,

talking endlessly, a reassuring monotony,
like the monotony of sand swept at evening
by the bagnini as fishermen put out to sea.

Two children raced into the waves,
an assured unison, their matchstick limbs
as in a cave painting lifted in vigour and joy.

This is paradise, you’d say (the tranquillity
of words connecting us). Paradise...
the Greek for pleasure garden –

but our paradise was unconstrained,
unfinished, left everything
to be discovered. I do not seek, I find,

said Picasso, whose three dancers
on the seashore lifted arms to the sky.
But in that largeness of light and water

we’d never find the end. Three-year-old Lorenzo
played in the sand, carried water to his sandcastle
in a blue bucket; he would never

empty the sea.
The inexhaustible reserves of waves
and words waited.

 

Page(s) 46

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