Robert Lowell(1917–1977)
Water
It was a Maine lobster town—
each morning boatloads of hands
pushed off for granite
quarries on the islands,
and left dozens of bleak
white frame houses stuck
like oyster shells
on a hill of rock,
and below us, the sea lapped
the raw little match-stick
mazes of a weir,
where the fish for bait were trapped.
Remember We sat on a slab of rock.
From this dance in time,
it seems the color
of iris, rotting and turning purpler,
but it was only
the usual gray rock
turning t h e usual green
w h e n drenched by the sea.
T h e sea d r e n c h e d the rock
at our feet all day,
and kept tearing away
flake after flake.
O n e night y o u d r e a m e d
you w e r e a m e r m a i d clinging to a wharf-pile,
and trying to pull
off the barnacles w i t h your h a n d s .
W e w i s h e d our two souls
might return like gulls
to the rock. In the end,
the water w a s too cold for us.