On The Côte Sauvage. Poem by Rob Dyer

The Atlantic gale that now abrades the Côte Sauvage
stirs the savage skin as it has done since men dared raise
these broken menhirs to the god that pounds the broken cliffs
with wind and wave and the loud cry of the gulls.

On how many such wild cliffs must the soul walk,
suspended between the sea and stone, before it travels free
the breathless passages of space unmeasured by our pulse
or earth's rotation to the sun or moon's,
where time no longer counts or day or night
in that vast prise we call eternity?

The first chill wind that heralds summer's quick demise
comes to dislodge the last red petal from the rose.
The sap now answers in the burdened hip
this winter's menace to its aging stock.

So heavy hangs the burden of my seed;
the rider that has mounted blithe fields
where once the wild eglantine lay open to his play,
and the long curse like a boundary stone across his loins,
obeys its ancient call of having sons.