As many have walked this beach
As sat on Thomas Hardy's seat,

And if they were counted maybe more,
A doctor from London, a priest from Ecuador;

Yeats himself who was ten foot tall
To see all he saw,

Sydney Bernard, in the late afternoon,
Just out from the word-processor in his room.

We'd pass without a word
Nursing a hurt,

In the horrors of sobriety,
The discontent of solitude.

Austie himself who spent his life on ship
Travels the land on his new hip.

A dead ass which came in in a storm
Is buried three times and is three times reborn.

What would the living do
If they had not the dead to see to?

Mountbatten, Jack B., Norwegian sailors.
Annie-Come-Ashore, the Bruens, Sligo jailors.

Each walks to the edge of the surf.
One life for them was not enough.

Towards evening come nurses from Cregg,
On the first beach a Christian mission is fed.

Sometimes a golfer will stand on a sand dune,
A bishop appears, or two nuns, or no one.

The dead have a certain momentum.
Sometimes it's hard to keep up with them.

I fall into step with some other
Who came up for the day with his mother?

In a different century,
A sprightly lad, malevolent, pernickety.

The three beaches are crowded though you can't see a soul.
The practical, the comfortable, the vulnerable.

And what do they see when they turn to come back?
The living out swimming or the solitude they lack?

How will I be when I have not the second or the third
To walk at night looking for the right word.