Poem: ‘Ten Steps to the Sea’
Allen Curnow, 1 January 1998
I
Repeat this experience wilfully. Instruct this experience to repeat itself.
II
With or without vicarious detail for all verities of this place. Me too.
III
Plenty of that already. Kikuyu grass underfoot, thunderheads, purple- patched sunshine offshore, onshore the high dunes, the hollows of wetted sand, rabbit shit. Foot of a cliff, arm of a stream where fallen yellow bloom degrades....