We stopped, to hunt shells; burnished rails slid by,
Outcurved through treeless country. Where they lay
in coral, in old dredgings bleached chalk-dry,
We bent in search, the tide’s roar leagues away,
Their waves the glossy ripples of bare heat.
So they had bided, iridescence dimmed
To death-skin white on fluted spiral, pleat,
And oval, or with obscure tracings rimmed
On lip and tongue.
Alone, we poked around
In such pale bedrock rubble; trains clicked past,
Moved us, and then left silence; there we found
More of these shells which, faded, still held fast
To shapes once ocean-living; at our backs
Stretched miles and miles of ties and stolid tracks.