An Afternoon at the Beach

I’ll go among the dead to see my friend.

The place I leave is beautiful: the sea

Repeats the winds’ far swell in its long sound,

And, there beside it, houses solemnly

Shine with the modest courage of the land,

While swimmers try the verge of what they see.

I cannot go, although I should pretend

Some final self whose phantom eye could see

Him who because he is not cannot change.

And yet the thought of going makes the sea,

The land, the swimmers, and myself seem strange,

Almost as strange as they will someday be.

Copyright Credit: Edgar Bowers, “An Afternoon at the Beach” from Collected Poems (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997). Copyright © 1997 by Edgar Bowers. Reprinted with the permission of the Estate of Edgar Bowers.

Source: Poetry (December 1961)