"Land's End" by Weldon Kees

From the preface, written in 1960, by Donald Justice:
  The poetry of Kees makes its deepest impression when read as a body of work rather than a collection of isolated moments of brilliance. This may account in part for the neglect from which it has suffered. Though a number of the poems are brilliant and many are moving, no single poem perhaps is flawless.
IMHO, perhaps especially in the realm of poetry, flawless can only be a subjective term. That said, here comes a shorter one (these days my preferred length) that is nearly so:

LAND'S END

A day all blue and white, and we
Came out of woods to sand
And snow-capped waves. The sea
Rose with us as we walked, the land
Built dunes, a lighthouse, and a sky of gulls.

Here where I built my life ten years ago,
The day breaks gray and cold;
And brown surf, muddying the shore,
Deposits fish-heads, sewage, rusted tin.
Children and men break bottles on the stones.
Beyond the lighthouse, black against the sky,
Two gulls are circling where the woods begin.

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