SEASIDE by HUMBERT WOLFE

FIRST, the luggage cart --
eleven trunks, four cases, a bath, a perambulator
and me on it for a start;
but, not an ordinary cart, not an ordinary load,
rumbling and grumbling down the steep side
of Parkfield Road.
No! a cart that has the tang of the sea about it,
and the grip
of the first strange mast against the skyline, of
the first ship,
and all the trunks (and me) wearing the magical
shapes
of the old traveller's cargo of dreams -- of peacocks
and apes.
Then Manningham railway station, changing
from a railway
to the moon's path across the seas, the still, the
pale way.
And the train bewitched, like the traveller's cargo,
in the transient daylight disguise of boyhood's
Argo,
and the heroes quietly watching the captain at
the prow,
and all the oars striking together, as he suddenly
orders "Now!"
Then lunch in the train!
Don't you wish that you could taste ambrosia
again?
Whether it be hard-boiled eggs with salt in a
paper packet,
or cold chicken with a drum-stick, and white
young teeth to crack it.
But you are not really eating cold chicken or eggs,
but the funny small tarry smell of barrels and kegs,
the thin heart-shaking masts, the unbelievable
blue
huge ocean that will suddenly envelop you
till you feel like a swaying jelly-fish (you did, if
I knew you)
with the green light of the water positively
pouring through you.
You are eating the drive in the fly along the
parade to the lodging,
seven of you hunched together, and shouting,
and dodging
one another's knees; you are eating the queer
smell
of faded leather (after all these years I can feel
the smell come,
like pot-pourri out of a jar), the landlady bidding
you welcome,
the shiny blue bucket with a gold rim, quite a
good one,
to make up for the steel spade you wanted, and
they made you have a wood one --
all these you eat, but most of all you are eating
(and do not know) the pause there's no repeating
when Time, that traps all gay and lovely things,
like a tall angel, folds his gull-shaped wings,
and whispers, with two fingers raised, that brush
the small bright head, to his loud legions "Hush!"

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