On Shingle Street
The summer’s sweet,
The stones are flat,
The pebbles neat
And there’s less rip
When tides are neap.
It’s fine to swim, or fine to try
But when the sea runs fast and high
And skies turn black and cormorants weep
Best watch your step on Shingle Street.
On Shingle Street
The shelving’s steep
With stones to skim
As if they’d feet
To hop and skip
Across the deep,
To pitter-pat and aquaplane,
Again again again again,
Not flip and flop, and splash and drop,
The opened trap, the hangman’s rope,
The cairns that mark where life gave out,
The muddy dark off Shingle Street.
From Shingle Street
To Bawdsey Bay
The sea-mews shriek
Above the spray,
The rolling seals
Are charcoal grey
As though burnt out or singed by grief.
Like ash-streaked mourners, half-possessed,
They duck and bob and stare to land
In hope that we might understand.
But nothing helps, we fail the test,
They hang and gaze without relief
Beyond the reach of Shingle Street.
For Shingle Street’s a single street,
A row of shacks in stone and wood,
The sea out front, the marsh out back,
Just one road in and one road out,
With no way north except the spit,
And no way south except on foot,
A cul-de-sac, a dead-end track,
A sandbanked strand to sink a fleet,
A bay, a bar, a strip, a trap,
A wrecking ground, that’s Shingle Street.
On Shingle Street
As sunset seeps
Across the marsh
The flocks of kale
Are grazing sheep,
A soft pink light
Sneaks up the beach
As if each stone were ringed with fire,
As if each pebble held the heat
Of past disasters, past defeats.
And in the dusk they tell a tale
Of burning boats and blistered flesh,
And you can’t help but watch and hear
And smell the oil and taste the fear
And feel your skin scorch in the heat:
You won’t sleep sound on Shingle Street.
On Shingle Street
The stones are neat
And warm as stoves
Beneath your feet
Like aga-lids
That store the heat.
But just an inch or two below
It’s sloppy-wet and cold as snow.
The lips are dry but not the mouth.
The tide’s come in though it’s still out,
The icy north’s migrated south.
The oven tops are just a cheat.
Beware the tricks of Shingle Street.
For Shingle Street’s a sneaky street,
That smiles and mangles, lures and wrecks,
Where water strips and wind dissects,
Where sea-kale bows its green-grey head
As waves wash up the new-made dead,
A bolt-hole built with ghost-white stones,
A charnel house for ancient bones,
A beach, a bitch, a crypt, a con,
A bight, a morgue, a scam, a tomb,
A sun-trap strand, a catacomb,
An angel with a nasty streak,
A seabird with a razor beak,
A double bluff, that’s Shingle Street.
From Shingle Street
To Orford Ness
The waves maraud,
The winds oppress,
The earth can’t help
But acquiesce
For this is east, and east means loss,
A lessening shore, receding ground
Where land runs out and nothing’s sound,
Just inches last year, this year feet –
Nothing lasts long on Shingle Street.
On Shingle Street
The grind goes on,
A churning bowl
Of sand and stone,
A watery mix that unbuilds homes,
Unearthing earth, unlaying land,
Tall waves that flash like silver spades,
And bulldozed buffs and quarried bays,
Not give-and-take but take-and-keep,
Just shingle left on Shingle Street.
For Shingle Street’s a sinking street,
The worn-out coast’s in slow retreat
With lopped-off bluffs and crumbling cliffs,
And empty air where churches stood,
And houses perched, and fields and woods,
And no known means to stop the rot.
A breakers’ yard of rusted hulls,
Where combers come and herring gulls,
A holding bay for washed-up trash,
A rest home for the obsolete,
A hole, a heap, a wreck, a wrack,
A nomad’s land, that’s Shingle Street.
On Shingle Street
The sea repeats
Its tired old tricks,
Its one-man show,
The drumrolled waves along the strand,
The bass-line thud and cymbal-clash
As stones are stoned and pebbles dashed.
Again again again again
The waves collapse, the flints resound,
The tide runs in and takes the ground,
The tide runs out, the ground slips back.
Variety is not the name
But that’s the point – the sea’s the same,
Unchanging grey, the one sure thing,
A flooded plain in plain disguise,
A level field that hides its rise
Through constant ebb and constant flow,
Unlike the earth, which shifts and shrinks,
Unlike ourselves, who have to go.
