A whiter bone:
the sea-voice
in a multiple monody
crowding towards that end.
It is as if
the transparencies of sound
composing such whiteness
disposed many layers
with a sole movement
of the various surface,
the depths, bottle-glass green
the bed, swaying
like a fault in the atmosphere, each
shift
with its separate whisper, each whisper
a breath of that singleness
that ‘moves together
if it moves at all’,
and its movement is ceaseless,
and to one end–
the grinding
a whiter bone.
Charles Tomlinson
