The Soft Issue
August 2017
Poetry
At the Seaside
By: David Iruoje
A youth did dash down to the pier,
amid wet rocks, wailing shrubs and thundering
skies
His bride and mother did fly after him with cries
The priest entreated him with sweet sermons.
But he yielded not;
His ears sealed with the gravel of ambition
his heart steeled like the old Pharaoh.
An old sailor with chaffed hands and a smoking
pipe
mumbled as the youth flew past;
“He who thinks he alone is sane and the world
be mad,
must soon come to Scylla and Charybdis upon
a rotten raft”.
35
the
LENS