17 AUGUST 1956, Page 20

Losing a Sail

By walls half-built to bar the creeping tide, A ruined church, a pewter-coloured sea, Salt stagnant ponds : the marram stalks are plied Beneath a wind that snaps all withering stems; Dusk blurs the sickle-contour of the bay On which, far out, a fifteen metre skims.

Lightly the yacht is heeling to the sails; Its underbelly shines in the last sun Almost as radiant as a mackerel's scales When it is dying. Loosened by a roof, The great jib bellies out; the jib-sheet gone, It whirls to the horizon like a leaf.

J. E. M. LUCIE-SMITH