Love, we must part now: do not let it be Calamitious and bitter. In the past There has been too much moonlight and self-pity: Let us have done with it: for now at last Never has sun more boldly paced the sky, Never were hearts more eager to be free, To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I No longer hold them; we are husks, that see The grain going forward to a different use.

There is regret. Always, there is regret. But it is better that our lives unloose, As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light, Break from an estuary with their courses set, And waving part, and waving drop from sight.

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit, Whatever they are, As bribes to teach them how to execute Sixteen sexual positions on the sand; This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club, Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub By private car.

Such uncorrected visions end in church Or registrar:

A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch; Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme With money; illness; age. So absolute Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit Whatever they are.

How distant, the departure of young men Down valleys, or watching The green shore past the salt-white cordage Rising and falling.

Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen Simply to get away From married villages before morning, Melodeons play

On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water Or late at night Sweet under the differently-swung stars, When the chance sight

Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage Ramifies endlessly. This is being young, Assumption of the startled century

Like new store clothes, The huge decisions printed out by feet Inventing where they tread, The random windows conjuring a street.