The City’s Guts; The Beach; The Chariot of Surya

 

The Beach

Smooth            grey pebbles           lie          among the shingle
like        sea eggs             on        hard           orange and yellow      chips of glass
Only         the high      spring tides           wash up to              the promenade
Among     the shingle         burnt out        cigarette         ends
splinters            of plastic                      chocolate wrappers,
lost                rings        the detritus              of                       a long summer
Beyond               this the sand            washed           by the        restless sea
streamers          of              brown seaweed     half-buried             shell
Sandcastles           ruined by              jealous waves
only       a                    few broken                    turrets                             remain
The sand              is wetter now               with disappearing      foot prints
At            last                                                   
                  the waves breaking frothing licking
Snakes’            tongues                                   flicking over all
the                    fragments              of             a         dying summer



The City’s Guts

Among the old chairs, waiting sadly for a sitter,
stained mattresses lie over the side of empty bins.
The junk yard’s a faded, sepia photo of our past.
The waves of flotsam and jetsam wash up here.
A forlorn, fluffy animal, once some child’s pet,
lies, cotton entrails hanging out.
In a heap, a platoon of broken tin soldiers,
some decapitated, in a horror of mangled metal,
awaits final annihilation and defeat.
The boundary fence surrenders 
to the ranks of rubbish.
Iron posts, bent and buckled, fail to
stem the advance.
Stinking piles of rotting refuse cross
the Front Line to invade the Park.
Carpets, old and battered, 
spread out in a futile gesture,
under a two-legged table
and wheelless bike.
Scavengers, the dispossessed, rifle through
once prized possessions.
Vulture-like, they hover, flutter and fight 
over the carcass of the city, its rotting guts.




The Chariot of Surya*

Moonlight contains, holds the scene
softly within its magic realm
we have been given the moment
outsiders, privileged, neither
voyeurs nor audience.
This chariot temple of the Sun
stands facing the ocean
pale stone makes surrounding
night blacker, more intense
more ethereal.
The great sculptured wheels of the chariot,
each carved as a sundial,
are turning, stirring, water begins to churn
as the temple itself plunges seaward.
The faces of the Sun God, Surya
 change as the moonlight
shadows or lightens his expressions.
These faces alter from dawn to evening
as stone horses pull the great chariot 
in its daily journey across the sky.
we watch and believe the illusion
as the tide advances, the god journeys
through the darkness to meet the dawn.
Now the sun rises over the sea,
the first bright ray
will strike the god’s forehead
another day has dawned.



*The Chariot of Surya is a magnificent temple on the eastern coast of Orissa, India. It takes the form of a chariot pulled by horses and is a World Heritage Site.