Eskdale Valley

After yesterday's epic exertions we considered a shorter walk was in order today ;-)

Spent the afternoon above the Eskdale Valley and thoroughly enjoyed the views back down towards Boot and out towards the coast ... where Norman Nicholson wrote one of my very favourite poems:


Sea to the West

When the sea’s to the west
The evenings are one dazzle -
You can find no sign of water.
Sun upflows the horizon;
Waves of shine
Heave, crest, fracture,
Explode on the shore;
The wide day burns.
In the incandescent mantle of the air.

Once, fifteen,
I would lean on handlebars,
Staring into the flare,
Blinded by looking,
Letting the gutterings and sykes of light
Flood into my skull.

Then, on the stroke of bedtime,
I’d turn to the town,
Cycle past purpling dykes
To a brown drizzle
Where black-scum shadows
Stagnated between backyard walls.
I pulled the warm dark over my head
Like an eiderdown.

Yet in that final stare when I
(Five times, perhaps, fifteen)
Creak protesting away -
The sea to the west,
The land darkening -
Let my eyes at the last be blinded
Not by the dark
But by the dazzle.

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Norman Nicholson (1914-1987)

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