1.

Circling like a gull that the breezes blow,

an aloof spectator, I keep in touch

with groups of people, sitting in rows,

melting ice-cubes in the goblets they clutch.

2.

From a perch behind, I join the crowd

in gaping and giggling at the bicycle clown,

while wincing at the gaze from the beady brow

of some long-haired poser in a flowered gown.

3. 

A schooner without sails, on an even keel,

comes chugging to the harbour from across the bay,

all softly, on a lapping silk-sheened sea,

where the mirrored sunlight is fused into a glaze.

4. 

Aloft, the watchman, like a steeplecock,

is twisting to windward with a signal bell,

while the vessel glides through the blue-nosed rocks,

whose fins are rippled by the lazy swell.

5. 

The ship is a dancer dressed in white,

and she waltzes inwards from the shadow’s gloom.

Then the motors check, like a death in flight,

and the anchor rumbles to a quayside tomb.

6.

And they whose hands are so callus-free

train their glasses on a fisherman’s hut,

dreaming a shorescape which helps them to be

lifted from out of their money-filled rut.

7. 

In sweated shorts, the lawyer from Milan

is pleased to be sitting in the fox’s den,

with the deft embrace of all the jests he can,

to make a brother of his mocking friend.

8.

And she who reigns in this queenly style,

her face diffused with a gentle dread,

is fretting wanly from a placid smile

to fester the burden in her anguished head.

9. 

Mosquitoes emerging from their trance at dusk,

I sink my body in the darkening brine,

to fix an eyeball to the galleon’s husk,

and watch all the orgies from an inner shrine.

10.

 While daemons flash their frenzy from guitars,

I know not if the floor, or I, have spun -

shooting my glances through a host of stars,

which blaze their rainbows like a shattered sun.

11.

I grasp the twinkle in a beckoning eye

from half a couple, jointed at the hip.

My vision falters, and there’s no reply

from the smudgy pinkness of her pouting lip.

12.

I fleck the river with another cast,

while they amble round me in a fierce parade.

But the music ceases in a silent blast,

and all are shadows that are melting to the shade.

13.

And while I’m rising to distant heights,

in the bubble of a wave, and heaven borne,

I watch the schooner as she phantom-glides

over silver shoals that the moon has spawned.

14. 

Rounding to the soft horizon, nought

but a glow-worm cluster glitters on the sea.

Yet the pulse of music in my ear is caught,

and mingled with the drumming of an engine’s beat.

15. 

When dawn bedims the lantern at my door,

there are clouds dismembered into streaky strands,

and a curling wind has swirled the shore,

sweeping the tracks from this summer sand.