Sunset I & II by Margaret Atwood
I
This is a different beach,
grudging & thin. Behind, the standard
industrial detritus. In fron the generous
gasping sea, which flops against the shore
like a stranded flounder.
Tonight there's no crescendo
in the sun either, no brilliant red
catastrophes, no slashed
jugulars; merely a smudged egg.
We walk in our boots, too chilled
for skin on the sand, which is anyway
smeared with grease and littered
with exhausted lunches and clumps of torn-out
hair. There's a seagull,
avarice in its yellow
eye. It would like us face down
in the ebbtide. I hold your hand, which probably
detaches at the wrist. Heat theory states
I'll soon be as cold as you. Plato
has a lot to answer for.
I'd take you where
I'm going, but you won't come,
you're snowbound & numb & neatly
ordered. No remedy, drop everything,
wade into the illegal
greying sea, with its dirty
sacred water and its taste of dissolving metal,
which is nearly dead but still trying,
which is not ethical.
II
Sunset, now that we're finally in it
is not what we thought.
Did you expect this violet black
soft edge to outer space, fragile as blown ash
and shuddering like oil, or the reddish
orange that flows into
your lungs and through your fingers?
The waves smooth mouthpink light
over your eyes, fold after fold.
This is the sun you breathe in,
pale blue. Did you
expect it to be this warm?
One more goodbye,
sentimental as they all are.
The far west recedes from us
like a mauve postcard of itself
and dissolves into the sea.
Now there's a moon,
an irony. We walk
north towards no home,
joined at the hand.
I'll love you forever,
I can't stop time.
This is you on my skin somewhere
in the form of sand.
