What are the monumental sculptures littering the beach
Where California ends supposed to teach us?
Songs hum through them far from human pitch.
Their faces have turned monstrous.
Demon angels stare down the crushing surf
From far above this intersection of oceans,
The folds of their stony robes veined with gems
Like the fabric of thundering foam below,
Where huge black femurs and pelvises lay shattered
And dripping sand has petrified to pillars
To tell us who we are, before the friendless horizon
Where cormorant white wings are transparent in the sky.
It's beauty, whatever land's end is holding.
The splash and sparkle of this catastrophic merging
Is not, somehow, for us.
We return, as we must, to the beaches
And crowds and the white hotels and towels,
Passing on the way an ornamental garden
With translucent lizards, vivid hibiscus,
Golden koi...
At last a beauty we can contemplate,
As delicate and fraudulent as we pretend we are.
