Coast Yarn
Skies pebbled with stars,
Sea, breathing like a sleeping animal,
Wind nuzzling wet shagginess of moors.
The coarse bright strains of an accordion,
Perversely stretched and shrunken
Against a wall of dark.
Brown faces, high cheekbones,
Polyglot sea-words;
A cold, dark swiftness;
Hardness of diligence
For shrewd, tight-fisted gain.
The Cranberry Pickers dance gravely
In squalid shacks on the moors,
And the greasy bottles pass
From old lips to young;
Rough doorways blurt out light;
White teeth, dark eyes shine.
There is chattering wharf talk
And garbled dock yard French;
Clamdiggers, Scallopers,
Fondle their dirty rolls
Of smoky dollar bills
And stride in booted ease.
Out of the moorland night
She, saucily, slips in,
Thistledown on her hair;
Little, slim, ear-ringed, scarlet-bloused,
Her feet and impertinent breasts four mischievous mongrel words
In a universal language;
Her mouth gleams like berries,
Swamp-light in her eyes—
Someone clasps, someone curses—
Then screams; a knife....
The sea, like an animal panting;
The sands, scared and white,
Broken barrels of cranberries
Strewn like unholy rosaries;
A man, stripped and bleeding,
Thrown overboard at midnight
Where the tide runs strong.
On a small brown neck
A long gold chain
To match new earrings!