Land’s End

By Weldon Kees 1914–1955 Weldon Kees

A day all blue and white, and we

Came out of woods to sand

And snow-capped waves. The sea

Rose with us as we walked, the land

Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.

Here where I built my life ten years ago,

The day breaks gray and cold;

And brown surf, muddying the shore,

Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.

Children and men break bottles on the stones.

Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,

Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.

Weldon Kees, “Land’s End” from The Collected Poems of Weldon Kees edited by Donald Justice by permission of the University of Nebraska Press. Copyright 1962, 1975, by the University of Nebraska Press. © renewed 2003 by the University of Nebraska Press.

Source: The Collected Poems of Weldon (2003)

Land’s End

Land’s End

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