Let the crumpled body of that swimmer
Be indicator; that vivid hanging
In the sea, whose once trim wrist was time,
Now lies a pleasurable man of summer
Where the waves’ green eyes break for wanting
His body as prize, his lips for salt and lime.
There are many deaths, shockingly inappropriate:
The young child whose brittle mind was once
Accustomed to the world; he could not foretell
What innocence confounds the sea: for this no opiate,
No predatory wish, no magic lance
But the darkling single diver finding hell.
Is it because some rode quietly through evening
Neglecting the uncomfortable beggar
Who knows the shape of evening as anonymous,
That this, this death, this sudden rendering
Intrigues eternity to smaller frame, and yet is bigger
Than the daily tragedy residing at your house?
Is it because so much of evil is private,
The almost illicit friendship, the inability
To say—this is the violence that precedes decay?
To finger precisely the wound or covet
Wholly the lover whose insular security
Was probed, so painfully, day to day?
It is perhaps the reaping of misuse
When sandals cling their music to the foot
And beach umbrellas in the sun contrive for war:
The dark decisiveness of summer is the root.
We know that shore which once was certainty,
And we will never find what we were looking for.
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