DOUARNENEZ.

This land was never France
by the Atlantic-glance,
The Emerald-coast
brimmed with ghost - and - water dance;
Trance-mist and trance of the imagination
Outside France.

Where to begin?
The place is clouded, shifting, old as sin,
The sea's creation, difficult to bless.
The tides pull its body about,
Race in, steal out;
Whip-up a surf for dress,
Strip it to nakedness -
Innumerable forms of water point the old stone' distress.

Leave it alone.
Down too quick to water,
Down too quick to stone,
Down too quick to the bone,
To water and stone.
Down to the quick of stone.

And in the heart of the rock there are tears
Which do not gush out.

2.

And there is too much water

about:- Sea flaws and wind-scarves and pans of rain
in the rocks.

Tide-pools flushed by the terrible return of the
sea.

Leave it alone

Where there is nothing known,

Or to be known only by the tales drowned men tell.

Stones

distilling their secrets in water, air scourging
the sea,

The only land where dead mens' tales are told
and told too well.