"Life's too short to be a whore anymore," I sang out to the Atlantic Ocean from my seaside room in St. Malo, the brain quite fugal until I took a long walk seaward at low tide and watched closely old French ladies gathering crustaceans. When they left they shook their fingers saying, "@3maree, maree@1," and I watched them walk away toward shore where I had no desire to go. A few stopped and waved their arms wildly. The tide! The tide goes out, then comes in in this place huge, twenty feet or so, the tidal bore sweeping slowly in but faster than me. I still didn't want to leave because I was feeling like a very old whore who wanted to drown, but then this wispy ego's pulse drifted away with a shitting gull. Before I died I must eat the three-leveled "plateau" of these crustaceans with two bottles of Sancerre. It's dinner that drives the beaten dog homeward, tail half-up, half-down, no dog whore but trotting legs, an empty stomach. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...BUCOLIC COMEDY: THE DOLL by EDITH SITWELL VARIATIONS ON A THEME: ROMANCE by EDITH SITWELL I LOVE ALL BEAUTEOUS THINGS by ROBERT SEYMOUR BRIDGES THE OLD SHIPS by JAMES ELROY FLECKER THE STENOGRAPHERS by PATRICIA KATHLEEN PAGE IN MEMORIAM A.H.H.: 51 by ALFRED TENNYSON TO FURIUS ON POVERTY by FRANKLIN PIERCE ADAMS THE WANDERER: 1. IN ITALY: CHANGE by EDWARD ROBERT BULWER-LYTTON |