It was
cold and windy,
scarcely the day
to take
a walk on
that long beach.
Everything was withdrawn as far as
possible,
indrawn: the tide far out, the
ocean shrunken,
seabirds in ones or twos.
The rackety, icy, offshore wind
numbed our
faces on one side;
disrupted the formation
of a lone flight of
Canada geese;
and blew back the low,
inaudible rollers
in upright, steely
mist.
The
sky was darker than the water
- it was the color of mutton-fat jade.
Along the wet sand, in rubber boots, we
followed
a
track of big
dog-
prints (so big
they were more like lion-prints). Then we came on
lengths and lengths, endless, of wet white string,
looping up to the tide-
line, down to the
water,
over and over. Finally, they did end:
a thick white snarl, man-
size, awash,
rising on every wave, a sodden
ghost,
falling back, sodden, giving up the ghost...
A kite string? - But no kite.
[...]
Elizabeth Bishop, "The End of March,"
The Complete Poems: 1927-1979, NY: FSG, 1984, page 179.
