Beyond the bay, the infant-bearing sea

                                     by Rowan Williams

Swansea Bay: Dylan at 100

1.

A thumb drawn down, smearing the grey wash,

storm pillars float over a December morning,

            the sun still tipping rocks with liquid

out at the headland. In the bay swells urge

this way and that; a dark patch swings

out from the sea wall, pushes the pushing current

sideways, the lanes of water tilting by inches

under the lurid morning, heaving this way and that

beneath the mottled skin and pinching it into the long

blade of a wave, the knife under the cloth

ready to slice. Watching, you have no notion

how it all runs, the hidden weights swinging

and striking, passing their messages, hidden

as the pulses under the scalp, behind the eyes,

that sometimes pinch themselves into a sharp

fold, into an edge, as if the buried cranial dances

gathered themselves to cut, for a moment, at

the skull's dry case and break through in white curls.

2.

I sang in my chains. I listened for the pushing swell

of light in the country yards, the undertow

of bliss that still cuts at the cloth, at the bone,

at all the tired shrouds. I listened

for the tide retreating and the small lick and splash

of breeze on the trickles between corrugated sand,

for the silent footfall of pacing birds, processing

to their office. Beyond the bay, the infant-bearing sea

slips further off, the next room is quiet and the sun

whispers hoarsely. When I call in my dream for it,

my voice is small and the knife strains bluntly

at the knotted cloth. Watching the swell again

at whispering liquid sunrise, I have no answer

when I wonder how the world's sand runs

out of grace and the dark moods of the water

jostle each other; I cannot tell if they will gather

ever again, severing the milky web that holds me

mortally. Do not go. Now as I was

From Rowan Williams, The Other Mountain.