A Poem by Phil Crick

This poem is quoted from Treble Poets 3 Chatto & Windus 1977.

Quiberon by Phil Crick

"A ten-ton man
in a suit of stone
dozes face down
on the edge of France.

His green jaws nudge
the immaculate beach
and the low waves lance
a rift in his bone.

All ropes unreel
in his waterlogged heart.
He sways on his bed.
His vertebrae moan.

And he floats a long cry
down through the sand
that even the stars
and the quasars own.

Its echo shatters
the sky off Belle-Ile.
At sunset, too,
sea-owls murmur."