Fleur Adcock - Incident lyrics

When you were lying on the white sand, a rock under your head, and smiling, (circled by dead shells), I came to you and you said, reaching to take my hand, 'Lie down.' So for a time we lay warm on the sand, talking and smoking, easy; while the grovelling sea behind s**ed at the rocks and measured the day. Lightly I fell asleep then, and fell into a cavernous dream of falling. It was all the cave-myths, it was all the myths of tunnel or tower or well - Alice's rabbit-hole into the ground, or the path of Orpheus: a spiral staircase to hell, furnished with danger and doubt. Stumbling, I suddenly woke; and found water about me. My hair was wet, and you were lying on the grey sand waiting for the lapping tide to take me: watching, and lighting a cigarette.