Weed-flesh, wind-wracked, unbleeding
Clumped and kicked along the strand.
The stench and slickness of it;
Holdfasts clench like claws.
Encrustations craze them, salt caked,
Calcareous. Crabs scuttle, crustaceans
Jerk their joints within them. Stalkeyed,
Secretive; jostling for space.
You should have seen the storm
That wrenched them from rocks
Fathoms down, their forests
Of leathered leaves whirled
By ocean winds. Water
A flurry of whiteness, then
Browned by shreds of weed.
Lifted, cliff high, and dumped,
With shrimps - bug-eyed,
Planktonic, air-drowned
And spasmodic - the holdfasts,
Amputated from concretions,
Writhe in wind, like severed worms.
And all our glib presumptions
Wither with them: we too toil
To build on rock – and wind
And water ruin us.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem