Someone described the winter sea
off Inismore
as aubergine.
Now it is merely an indeterminate lead.
It is a fulsome word, aubergine,
three syllables requiring
three distinct movements,
the solidity of the ‘B’
attenuated by the dipthong
and soft ‘G’ which loll around the mouth,
roll and settle.
It is a word which takes its time,
luxuriating in itself.
Sea as aubergine gives beauty
to a purple malevolence,
but does not tell the black purple
of swollen corpses spewed up
onto black rocks.
In Australia, the aubergine is called egg-plant.
Winter sea as egg-plant has not the same allure
and is too mundane for menace.
