I shield my face. My eyes are closed. I spin
With nearing sleep. I am dissolved within
Myself, and softened like a ripening fruit.
I swing in a red-hazy void, I sway
With tides of blind heat. From a far-off sphere,
Like scratchings on a pillow, voices I hear
And thundering waves and thuds of passing feet;
For there, out there beyond me, lads and girls
In dazzling colours and with gleaming skin
Through sands of gold and surfs of opal run;
They dive beneath the long green claw which curls
Above them; on the white comber they shoot
Shoreward; many in a slow spiral melt
Like me into oblivion under the sun.