Classic Poem

It must be hard to sail a boat without wonder,
a pure, childlike wonder at small things:
the colours of shallows over mud-banks, the wings
of cormorants drying on spit-posts, crabs going under
rocks, or simply blue, spray and a sail full of air.
And it is impossible to sail without knowing
of breaking-strains, and that just so much wind
can capsize a dinghy, and that nowhere
for all the simple beauty and all the showing
of freedom, is there any smallest estuary you can blind
with non-science, or lie to. Therefore when
I see men sailing dinghies there seem to be
with them and whispering at the last edge of the sea
clear shadows of much earlier men.