'North Sea' by Sidney Keyes: Looking Eastward

Spiekeroog XXVII by daniel.stark. Used under Creative Commons license


Here, as the end of the year approaches, is a chilly poem about Germany - or, quite possibly, looking across into Germany from England - by Sidney Keyes. I will soon be heading for Germany, and it seemed a wintry poem anyway.

I am sure that in 2015 I will continue to post poems by Sidney Keyes, but you may expect to see a lot by Keith Douglas. He will, rather sadly, be out of copyright then.



NORTH SEA (Sidney Keyes)


The evening thickens. Figures like a frieze
Cross the sea's face, their cold unlifted heads
Disdainful of the wind that pulls their hair.
The brown light lies across the harbour wall.

And eastward looking, eastward wondering
I meet the eyes of Heine's ghost, who saw
His failure in the grey forsaken waves
At Rulenstein one autumn. And between
Rises the shape in more than memory
Of Düsseldorf, the ringing, the river-enfolding
City that brought such sorrow on us both.

                                                           October 1942.