From Brighton Pier

This is one of several poems that stuck with me for years. I return to it every time I feel a little lost.

On one of our walks.

Not quite Brighton Pier but it reminded me of this beautiful poem by Christmas Humphreys in his book “A Western Approach to Zen”. I would like to share it here:

Lean over Brighton Pier
Observe the waves that rise and fall
And each the product of its neighbour.
See on this one suddenly a spume
Of blue-white water dancing happily
Unpurposed on the undivided sea.
It has, in form and size and colour
Beauty of its own. It dies, dissolves,
Its wetness, blue-and-whiteness, all its self
Returned to vast undifference.

What made it so,
What blend of moon-led tide and ocean-thrust,
And vagrant windy sky forged once
With fused uncertainty of power
That sunlit wavelet on a dancing sea?
And I, that pondering observe,
What provenance have I?
A million moments, born of No-thing were,
And being so, just this am I.

But who is this that speaks of this?
Who watches both observer and the sea?
He knows the wavelet of his name and form;
Content and happily diffused he knows
Himself no separate thing. Then whence the sea?

It is no matter; in the mind set free
There is no-wavelet dancing on no-sea!
No-Self to tell no-self it shall not be!
Only the dancing pier, the happy wave and me!