A thousand and a thousand more again,

These little waves roll in along the shore,

And constantly appear and disappear

While mothers tear their useless hair.

Calling, calling one more time:

Each vanishment abruptly noticed

With a sick chill, either when

A pater familias heads for a car-park too soon

Or when Akela stoops to examine

A traction belt too long at the steam fair.

Awful to end up so far ahead of the others

At the Pitch ’n’ Putt, only to discover

Your chums have already abandoned the game;

Worse to be left behind at the toboggan run.

x

And so one calls and calls in vain

Where knee-high marram hides a kink in a track

Up through the dunes where the wartime

Pill-box daubed with obscene requests

Pronounces them bludgeoned or,

No, not yet, they must turn up,

Blistered merely by the Wild Parsnip,

At the Lifeguard Service Point, not under sand –

And then the odd one, the simply forgotten,

Missing, but not missed, ekes out an existence

Trawling for bottles on deserted beaches.

*

An early poem of mine, first published in the TLS. Peter Pan is of course the archetype of the lost child, and I am reading J.M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens” which preceded the West End popular play featuring Wendy, Captain Hook and Neverland. This earlier version is a surreal masterpiece, tragic, and hauntingly written, and with the strangest of all Arthur Rackham’s illustrations to accompany the writing. I plan to write an essay on it soon.