Algy took cover in the thick Marram grass on the top of the sand dunes, and gazed out across the pale sand. There was a strange light today and, despite the wind, the sea was very quiet, with an odd pallid shimmer that perhaps suggested a storm to come. As always, the wind blew constantly through the tall grasses, with a swishing, rustling motion all around him. Its perpetual, insistent whispering reminded Algy of a poem:
There is no dusk to be,
There is no dawn that was,
Only there’s now, and now,
And the wind in the grass.
Days I remember of
Now in my heart, are now;
Days that I dream will bloom
White peach bough.
Dying shall never be
Now in the windy grass;
Now under shooken leaves
Death never was.
[Algy is quoting the poem An Eternity by the American 20th century Modernist poet and Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish.]