A Wind of the Sea by Jeremy Hooker

It exhausts me at last,
This querulous petition
Of a chalk Hamlet
To the ground.
The sea-wind needs
No addition from complaints;

It has touched
Chert and flint,
Left the smooth boulder
Unmoved, but acquired
Something of the character
Of stone. I leave
My mouth as its portion.

Let it resolve my breath
Into a taste of salt,
A scent of thyme,
A touch of stone.
My image I leave
To whoever it reflects;

But my body is the sea's;
It is a piece broken
From the hill, a chalk
Stack, not formed,
But worn down by the tides.

--------------------

Dawn

There is a moment
No one sees,
When earth is formed
In the image of neither
Mist nor light.

Grey flowers grow
On the giantless hill,
Over the untouched graves.
Sleeper and sleepless lie
Without a name.

Colour breaks and this day
Is one of the millions,
Bloodred, gold, with a streak
Of unearthly green
Like the eye of a god.

Dawn is perfectionOf a kind.
Now I wake
To the unfinished act
And the dead lie complet
For ever, under their names.

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Fossil Urchins

A tribe found them, believing
They grew like dandelions
In the soil.
An exquisite
From the Age of Fishes
Became the sun's icon,
Crowned with rays
,And a ring of suns,
Sacred to the resurrection,
Was placed around the dead.
There is still
a touch of man.
They are composed
Of blood and fire,
Where the sun roots in the earth
They are not clammy like potsherds,
But shapely and warm to the hand.