West Kirby Beach by Night.(Brief Article)(Poem)

 
WEST KIRBY BEACH BY NIGHT 
 
   Walking in the dark of the night's beach, 
   the tide not long gone but gone, and out there 
   something is calling, a seal on the sandbank, 
   some great sea-bird or soul in the pitch. 
   It is the cry of the voice in darkness: 
   it is the howling. 
 
   And I turn my back on this homely town 
   and the light that makes it civilised 
   and picture--you do not have to go too far--the 
   taking of a gold tooth from the mouth of a 
   corpse, 
   the thief using a small crow-bar. 
   The corpse, once a boy soldier, is faintly purple. 
 
   Some days each meal seems a gift of God. 
   Above a pan of cabbage the word "Peshawar" 
   trembles 
   and "only an old man" comes into my head. 
   We don't use the harrow here, in our little town. ...