I thought of my ‘faculty of poetry’
As of the eye
The bream or white-bait showed
In its hysterical dance of death
When the receding tide
Left it asleep
In a shallow pool on the shore.
Why did I fail to take it?
Was I strangely compassionate
Or merely afraid to touch
The jerking spasm of flesh
With the still eye?
Or was it I on the shore
In the shallow pool, left by the tide,
Engaged in that mystic dance of death,
Twenty years before?
(Barry Tebb)
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Based on Topics: Death & Dying Poems, Literature Poems, Poetry PoemsBased on Keywords: jerking, bream, hysterical