17 SEPTEMBER 1954, Page 12

What We Most Need to Say

What we most need to say eludes the voice, Like those deep fish that sea explorers glimpse Gaping dumb mouths, ridiculous as shrimps.

And when our pen, unreeling its thin line, Stabs, agonising, at the useless throats And drags them upwards to the waiting boats, Matched to the crushing depths that made them dumb By a fierce, whitening pressure from within, Noiseless as fungus, they burst through their skin, And float, spongy and shapeless, into view; While the freed spores sink through the darkening sea To where the white ghosts gape past, voicelessly.

RICHARD DRAIN