On The Making Of Pearls Poem by Tom Billsborough

Coat the wound with nacre, layer upon layer,
Create your pearls of iridescent lustre.
I stand upon this headland wedge,
And wrapped within my songs,
I whisper softly in another tongue
The dream is knowledge.
I pass beyond these Saxon graves,
Cut in sandstone on the polished cliff
And amble down towards a church,
Itself more ancient than the graves
And far below I see
Another graveyard, a graveyard by the sea.
I think again of Valéry, his resting place,
His monumental verse of iridescent lustre,
Wrought layer by layer from the true conflict
Between being and becoming.
Again I think of pearls, the oyster using pain
To create its shining future.