This poem is taken from PN Review 215, Volume 40 Number 3, January - February 2014.
Quend-Plage-les-Pins and Other Poems
Quend-Plage-les-Pins
This place would be beautiful
if it didn't exist. Well - the pines
can stay, and the dunes, with their strange
tenacious grasses; and the fine
falling sand, and the waves,
long and slanted, coming in
and coming in.
But it wouldn't need
this road, with its ribbons
and pennants, its kites and crêpes
and beach-toys. It wouldn't need
this fairground, this car-park,
this promenade. It wouldn't need
a name. It wouldn't need us.
Suburban Landscape Painter
...
This place would be beautiful
if it didn't exist. Well - the pines
can stay, and the dunes, with their strange
tenacious grasses; and the fine
falling sand, and the waves,
long and slanted, coming in
and coming in.
But it wouldn't need
this road, with its ribbons
and pennants, its kites and crêpes
and beach-toys. It wouldn't need
this fairground, this car-park,
this promenade. It wouldn't need
a name. It wouldn't need us.
Suburban Landscape Painter
...
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