The waves roll over and over
Rolling along the curve of the shoreline
Their stereophonic splashes washing over
Washing over
Silently the sodium lights glaze the ripples
Incidentally highlighting the ebb and flow
All the while the buoys and marker lights
Bobble and flicker
All of this through the blown open
Broken bathroom door
This after Yentob on Freud on the radio
Only pretending to understand
Wanting to remember this time
Wanting to describe the space
Describe the feeling
Sodium at the seafront
At midnight, no other sounds
Sea moving, air flowing
And earlier, Hockney saying painting
Painting is the real thing
A photograph could not capture
And you know he is almost right
But behind me is the sink
And down below the window
A solitary moment, a stranger passing
Neither captured by the flashbulb
Nor the paintbrush
Both unable to synthesise all of the view
But with these words
Written down, beside the corroded
Cracked glass single glazed window
With a cream windowsill inside
And outside
Sky blue, mottled, exterior paint
I can see out into the blackness
To describe that; now there is no horizon
Only a two-dimensional black space
A completely starless night sky
How would the painter work
Without depth and perspective
How would the photographer touch
The thousand miles of nothingness
Between here and the next continent
Or remember the background sounds
Beach bound pebbles crashing
Like sacks of marbles
Or the roar
Of the last motorbike
As he serenades
And leaves
The shoreline
Promenade
