Kendrick Smithyman

On that Beach

Not hard to imagine Archimedes on that beach.
One of those days of cruel sun, lupins popping,
gulls screaming, all uppers and downers and you
‘re out of your skull, man, you’re too long
in the sun. You’ll get burned like they burned
Archimedes for all he drew in the naked sand.
It should have washed away. Like, it was blood,
Guilty. It should have. It didn’t.

                                          No trouble imagining
Archimedes on that beach, sun, lupins, gulls,
young men going about their casual rough trade.
The trouble lies with the beach as it is,
imagining it again, as it were, as we were.

From Last Poems (The Holloway Press, 2002)

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Last updated 13 December, 2002