Leaving the Beach by Harry Mathews

PN Review 60, March - April 1988

In memoriam M.M., 1903-1986

Under a green sky
A tasseled shoal
Lies in blue compactness.
Beached kelp lines the shore.
Over shell-dotted sand
Promenaders meet and embrace.
Pleasures of conversation,
Anticipation of lunchtime fragrance
(Shallots and white wine)
Are missing from this November scene:
A father with one hand points,
With the other gently prods
His young lady towards the boy guardian
She herself has chosen
(She might deny this,
 
Babbling about her clothes:
Navy-blue high-buttoned coat,
White knee-stockings, beret).
The mid-season sky
Blows with a clamor
Between loon and owl.
Almost colorless gulls
Cry, 'Who cares?'
She hardly turns from one,
Hardly turns to the other,
Wishing not to care
About where she has come from
Or where she is,
Where she must go.

What can I give the young girl
To fill her absences?

A young girl
Sees fog
And cannot breathe,
From a young girl's nose fog drips,
And she cannot speak;
Gray leaves
Freeze into mottled stone
And eyes
Turn to thin buttons,
Outside-in.

Things I might have given
Have slipped away -
No haven to turn in,
Grasp and purpose lost,
Memory awry.

A boy whispering the imperfect wish,
May she lead him to comfort and sleep.

A gray dusk
Riddled with gold;
Blackbirds on grass
Beaked with pale yellow;
By parked cars
Oil rainbows.

Proximity sprang the lock
Between packed troubles
And tears shed for reasons
And a meal waited for
And a meal remembered:

Unfathomable, wide-open,
Burning eyes
Telling him to choose;
And I chose her eyes
To look through my eyes.

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This poem is taken from PN Review 60, March - April 1988. Two more poems by Mathews are included in the issue, ‘Epithalamion’ and ‘Entreaty to My Mother’, a translation of Pier Paolo Pasolini.