THE SEA WALL

Hyperbolic edge to the Ladybower bellmouth, 1935–1944.
(Photograph by Peter Byrne 1991.) 

Found in Andrew Crompton's Three Doors to Other Worlds

The Sea Wall

The wall breaks and enters
the sea, who swallows
the barrier fragment
and slips through the hole like an arm
through a dress sleeve, and smoothes
and smoothes the sleeve to sand we stand on.
We die grain by grain.
How else to make salt
houses for all the creatures
who, as we cannot, go down and
down and open their eyes. 

-Melody S. Gee

YOU DWELLER IN THE DARK CABIN

Thomas Demand, Clearing,

Hymn from a Watermelon Pavilion

You dweller in the dark cabin,
To whom the watermelon is always purple,
Whose garden is wind and moon,

Of the two dreams, night and day,

What lover, what dreamer, would choose   

The one obscured by sleep?

Here is the plantain by your door   

And the best cock of red feather   

That crew before the clocks.

A feme may come, leaf-green,   

Whose coming may give revel   

Beyond revelries of sleep,

Yes, and the blackbird spread its tail,   

So that the sun may speckle,   

While it creaks hail.

You dweller in the dark cabin,   

Rise, since rising will not waken,   

And hail, cry hail, cry hail.

-Wallace Stevens