West Bay Cliffs

The sea is wild this evening.
The moon is swept with cloud.
Below our feet, the life of forgotten ages
gloats at our transient nature, frozen in its stony night.
And the waves crash down to the stubborn jetty.

Come walk the cliffs with me, in the twilight loud!
Only, from the long line of spray
where the sea frets at the resisting land,
listen! you hear the grating roar
of pebbles which the waves draw back, and grind
them, stirring the certainties of form and order,
crash, stir up, throw, make mock of human structures
and settle down, with note of doom,
to eat away at England.

Hardy long ago
heard it on these shores, and it brought
against his hope of Progress
the knowledge of futility
of science bringing false hopes
of human divinity.

The Western World
was once, too, at the full, and above and below the sky
tamed nature - placed men on the moon.
But now I only hear
its startled, sharp, withdrawing roar,
retreating, as the shadows return
the certainties fall, the skies darken like the snow-cloud
hanging over these perilous cliffs.

Ah, love, let us be strong
for one another! for the world, which seems
to lie before us like a land of nightmare,
so uncertain, so frightening, so broken,
has really neither form, nor sense, nor reason,
nor science, nor hope, nor light for our sight.
And we stand on this crumbling cliff,
losing our footing as we feel the earth slide,
and we crash towards that merciless tide.