1. Past the city waterfront development, past the reflecting glass and the entrance to the jardin de la mer, from which three of the large black letters, d–e–a , were missing from the sign, gouged out, he wrote down, to adorn a young man’s wall,
Walking on to the soft sand, into which his shoes sunk deep, out past the old military vehicles, now put to peaceful use, bussing visitors there and back, besides the concrete pavement which had appeared before him, as if rising up out of the sea,
The rhythm beat out by the heavy pneumatic hammer striking the ends of the piles, echoing out from inside the harbour walls, at the lowest point stepping over the fast-flowing ford, And God parted the waters, he thought,
Or were the three missing letters, d–i–e , he had forgotten, treading on the bones of the dead, scattered whelks like black coins on the pavement, and the abandoned broken baskets, only the one o’clock gun ended it.
2. Where have I seen, written down, the word hunger, he asked, alone and barefoot, climbing the cold, steep granite steps to the small chapel on the rock, and sitting on the concrete ledge opposite the saint’s ancient stone bed,
Sounding the breath, Om and again Om, the echo that was also the drone of the light aeroplane overhead, the young girl entered silently, and then her elder brother looking away, Hello, he said, Sit down here, and then the children’s mother as well,
This is how it is done, he said, singing into the throat of the rock bed, since ever it was, as if it was the Creator himself there, growing the sound of the rock to the silent girl, sitting beside them, the brother, and the mother on the other side,
And he asked them to show him the other way back, it was a good exchange of gifts, this Mass, which all of them would remember, recalling for ever the mud-spattered dog tied to the metal railing at the bottom of the stone stairs.
3. Back past the other castle visitors, the grand battery, and the museum of cannons and wars, round the village green, inside the walls and battlements and the military hospital, and down the sunken road past the gone-over daffodils,
A man stepped out of the gatehouse, Hello, he said, we don’t allow dogs into the castle, the friendly eyes of the man looking straight through him, I will remember that, he replied, raising his right hand in an almost salute, Next time,
Walking back, knowing that the man would kill without any hesitation, with the same smiling face as he pulled the trigger, if he was ordered to, on the concrete city pavement which was now almost sun dry from the outgoing sea.