Against the Towers breakwater,
Only an ominous crashing,
While the wind whines overhead,
Coming down from the Hoolieland mountains,
Whistling between Nungate's arbors, the winding terraces;
A thin whine of wires, a rattling and flapping of leaves,
And the red light swinging and slamming against the lamp pole.
Where have the ABers gone?
There is one light on the mountain.
Along the Lothian-wall, a steady sloshing of the swell,
The waves not yet high, but even,
Coming closer and closer upon each other;
A fine fume or bucket of rain driving in from the sea,
Riddling the sand, like a wide spray of Tony's goatshot,
The wind from the sea and the wind from the mountain contending,
Flicking the foam from the whitecaps upwards into the tailcock buckets.
A time to go our MoFC home!--
And Daisy's Eric shift billows upward out of an alley,
A Queenie cat runs from the wind as we do,
Between the whitening trees, up North Berwick,
Where the heavy Igor's door unlocks,
And our breath comes more easy,--
Then a crack of trollish thunder, and the black rain runs over us, over
The steeo-roofed houses, coming down in gusts, beating
The Tower walls, the slatted windows, the piranhas, driving
The last watcher indoors, moving the AB gambling school closer
To their cards, their anisette.
We creep to our Tower beds, and their straw mattresses.
We wait; we listen.
The storm lulls off, then redoubles,
Bending the trees like asparagus, half-way down to the ground,
Shaking loose the last wizened apples in the orchard,
Flattening Lady J's infamous carnations.
A gness spider eases himself down from a swaying light-bulb,
Running over the coverlet, down under the iron bedstead.
The bulb goes on and off, weakly.
Water roars into the Pedant cistern.
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 Forth beach of the towering sea-swell,
The sudden shudder as the jutting sea-dune collapses,
And the Trigger hurricane drives the dead straw into the pine-tree.
Clean-o-Pine in tailcocks we toast
Our cold feet turning to the fire, our tootsies to roast.
The Tower our fortitude and, in the storm, our lee.