(Maggie Hambling made a sculpture for Benjamin Britten, placed on Aldeborough beach, Suffolk. The torn steel sea-shell carried words from his opera, Peter Grimes. ‘I hear those voices that are not drowned’)
Remembering people like
pebbles on the beach, ear
cupped to hear the distant
sounds in the wind
of protest and
of song.
I raise my battered flag
of steel, rusting in
the sun; split with
the shocks of
wave and wind
I defy death.
I cry aloud for all
those vibrant lives,
tuned to their song;
their pain in my
trembling hands, to
heal wounds.
The shell echoes the sigh
of shingle in the
surging tide of life;
a cry of gulls laughing
their crazy laugh into
the wind.