This Bitterest Coast

This is the end but since it is the end,
You are happy at least in this one certainty,
As you were in the eternity
Of childhood's blue summer with seagull and yacht for friend,
When God was good; love, true; sea, sea; land, land.
Yet dare not to base immunity
From baseness on this triviality!
The murdered once gathered sea poppies with a hand
To be scarleter, to be pressed to the blacker
And less amorous heart of death . .. Oh, Christ,
Wash up some bone-clear memory on this bitterest coast
Where is no wreck, dead beak nor feather
Though none venture here without disaster. Give at the last
One half-passionate tryst with the past;
Some little joy to gather to my salt grey breast
Though children were betrayed, and money was kissed first.