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."
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4 comments:
What a goof poet! I used to holiday in those parts and he seems to capture its mystery.
That's interesting. I could picture the Bel Ile of the poem as an actual place. Thanks for pointing it out.
(Belle Ile is an actual place...)
Extraordinary to feel geography in such a way. Quiberon is one of those places, a little like Portland, that has a bony, sad, lonely feel. Perhaps it's a feature of rocky peninsulars. I really like this poem.
Thanks Lucy for bringing the geography of Phil's poem home to me. The "bony, sad, lonely feel" fits exactly the mood of the poem.
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