The Idea of Entropy at Maenporth Beach
"C'est elle! Noire et pourtant lumineuse."
A boggy wood as full of springs as trees.
Slowly she slipped into the muck.
It was a white dress, she said, and that was not right.
Leathery polished mud, that stank as it split.
It is a smooth white body, she said, and that is not right,
not quite right; I'll have a smoother
slicker body, and my golden hair
will sprinkle rich goodness everywhere.
So slowly she backed up into the mud.
If it were a white dress, she said, with some little black,
dressed with a little flaw, a smut, some swart
twinge of ancestry, or if it were all black
since I am white,but- it's my mistake.
So slowly she slunk, all pleated, into the muck.
The mud spatters with rich seed and ranging pollens.
Black darts up the pleats, black pleats,
lance along the white ones, and she stops
swaying, cut in half. Is it right, she sobs
as the fat, juicy, incredibly tart mud rises
round her throat and dims the diamond there?
Is it right, so she stretches her white neck back
and takes a deep breath once and a one step back.
Some golden strands afloat pull after her.
The mud recoils, lies heavy, queasy, swart.
But then this soft blubber stirs, and quickly she comes up
dressed like a mound of lickerish earth,
swiftly ascending in a streaming pat
thatb grows tall, smooth brimming hips, and steps out
on flowing pillars, darkly draped.
And then the blackness breaks open with blue eyes
of this black Venus rising helmeted in night
who as she glides grins brilliantly, and drops
swatches superb as molasses on her path.
Who is that negress running on the beach
laughing excitedly with teeth as white
as the white waves kneeling, dazzled, to the sands?
Clapping excitedly the black rooks rise,
running delightedly in slapping rags
she sprinkles substance, and the small life flies!
She laughs aloud, and bares her teeth again, and cries:
Now that I am all black, and running in my richness
and knowing it a little, i have learnt
it is quite wrong to be all white always;
and knowing it a little, I shall take great care
to keep a little black about me somewhere.
A snotty nostril, a mourning nail will do.
Mud is a good dress, but not the best.
Ah, watch, she runs into the sea. She walks
in streaky white on dazzling sands that stretch
like the whole world's pursy mud quite purged.
The black rooks coo like doves, new suns beam
from every droplet of the shattering waves,
from every crystal of the shattered rock.
Drenched in the mud, pure white rejoiced,
from this collision were new colours born,
and in their slithering passage to the sea
the shrugged-up riches of deep darkness sang.
Peter Redgrove
