Against the stone breakwater
Only an ominous lapping
While the wind whines overhead
Coming down from the mountain
Whistling between the arbors, the winding terraces
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves
And the small street-lamp swinging and slamming against the lamp pole
Where have the people gone?
There is one light on the mountain
Along the sea-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell
The waves not yet high, but even
Coming closer and closer upon each other
A fine fume of rain driving in from the sea
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of buckshot
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps straight upward into the darkness
A time to go home!
And a child's dirty shift billows upward out of an alley
A cat runs from the wind as we do
Between the whitening trees, up Santa Lucia
Where the heavy door unlocks
And our breath comes more easy
Then a crack of thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The flat-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The walls, the slatted windows, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the cardplayers closer
To their cards, their anisette
We creep to our bed, and its straw mattress
We wait, we listen
The storm lulls off, then redoubles
Bending the trees half-way down to the ground
Shaking loose the last wizened oranges in the orchard
Flattening the limber carnations
A spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead
Water roars into the cistem
We lie closer on the gritty pillow
Breathing heavily, hoping
For the great last leap of the wave over the breakwater
The flat boom on the beach of the towering sea-swell
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-cliff collapses
And the hurricane drives the dead straw into the living pine-tree.
- Theodore Roethke, USA
