Tallyn Tor Poem by David Lewis Paget

‘I’m only the flotsam, jetsam drift
Cast up on your bars and beaches,
The glittering shift that you can’t resist
When viewed from your northern reaches,
I didn’t come down in a thunderstorm
Or a blast from your heaven’s lightning,
But cast ashore from the devil’s maw
As the jaws of the storm were tightening.’

‘You watched from the walls of Tallyn Tor
My stars and clouds surround me,
The smoke and drift of an ancient shift
That will always whirlwind round me.
Not even the peace of a lonely beach
Could trouble the storm that caught me
For I sink or swim in the storm within,
Not the eye of the storm that brought me.’

‘Deep in the halls of Tallyn Tor
Your hand was the hand to greet me,
And during the wintering months of war
Did your fevered storms defeat me.
If ever the tide should turn, should turn
In claiming its own around it,
I’ll leave the beach and the lover’s reach
As empty as flotsam found it.’

14 March 1975