Soft light slithers soundlessly across sea,
breaking that most barren eternity.
A gavel of gulls garrulously grate
that so mournful evening’s aching spate:
proud Pilate’s speech needed but this loud cry,
to turn aside the Pharisee’s decry.

Land lingers longest lit at dusk
by the failing flare’s silhouetted husk.
‘Handel’s Water Music’ laps absently
at the light-vacated shore on the lea.
The lonely warning bouy’s metallic song,
from the shadowed sea’s wave-spread diphthong.
Like Canute’s wet progress in that past age,
tidings challenge the scribbler’s pilotage.