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Dawn on the East Coast
by Alun Lewis
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From Orford Ness to Shingle Street The grey
disturbance spreads Washing the icy seas on Deben Head.
Cock pheasants scratch the frozen fields Gulls lift
thin horny legs and step Fastidiously among the rusted
mines.
The soldier leaning on the sandbagged wall
Hears in the comber's curling rush and crash His single
self-centred monotonous wish;
And time is a froth of
such transparency His drowning eyes see what they wish to
see; A girl laying his table with a white cloth.
The light assails him from a flank. Two carbons touching
in his brain Crumple the cellophane lanterns of his
dream.
And then the day, grown feminine and kind,
Stoops with the gulfing motion of the tide And pours his
ashes in a tiny urn.
From Orford Ness to Shingle
Street The grey disturbance lifts its head And one by
one, reluctantly, The living come back slowly from the
dead.
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