Aubade on Kho Samet

Lying on the salt-water-washed
stone in the evening, I might look like
a floating thing to a tern. Some Casanova
wind cavorts about, wooing trees.

The sea sings somewhat bitter elegies
and I look on. What do foam ripples say
about the state of things? It is so many
things, the sea. It says and is, even now, so
many things, in me. How so gentle to sight
and perfect skin and so lustfully burning
to the eyes and tongue? How so terrible
and tremulous at one end? How so tender
a baritone? How so deep (and how deep)

And how so crushing in its strongest blow?
The sun bares its breast and scatters all
who take their bit of light to sleep:
I wake in waves, and think that I shall never know.