By the Coastal Road
There is a tower upon the hill yonder.
In pensive mood here I would ponder.
The tower was a silhouette in the shape of a bat wing.
And at one o'clock the mysterious stranger should sing.
I watch the tower by the seashore.
And my feeling of awe grows in depth sore.
At the forefront of the tower gate
A seagull would spit and cower in spate.
Next to the weedy outcrop of the tower standing.
The waves were afraid to make a landing.
And the fish stayed away
From the bank of the towers' bay.
The sand whereby I sit is in contour depth.
By the weight of my mystical awe in being shot hath.
Still the tower looks.
Swinging their flaps, the heavy curtains fill up the nooks.
Jealous and wanting of lucky boon.
Envisaging an invasion, looks the moon.
Single and amassed in the height.
The tower looks to the moon in a show of might.
Sorry are those dead crabs.
That dared to progress to the slabs.
And in a vacant saga on the rocks.
Me looks up henceforth at the forbidden rocks.
The first of a new style
About This Poem
Marked by the author as "the first of a new style," this poem experiments with strict rhyming couplets and Gothic imagery reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe. The speaker sits on a beach observing a mysterious tower—shaped like a bat wing and inhabited by a "mysterious stranger"—that exerts such psychological power that even nature recoils from it. The waves fear to approach, fish avoid the bay, a seagull cowers at the gate, and dead crabs serve as a warning to other creatures. The formal rhyme scheme (ponder/yonder, sing/wing) creates a hypnotic rhythm that mirrors the speaker's fixation on the tower. The archaic diction ("in spate," "hath," "lucky boon") adds to the Gothic atmosphere. This coastal setting—possibly inspired by East African shorelines—becomes transformed into something from a dark fairy tale, where the tower engages in a silent standoff with the moon itself. The poem captures the uncanny feeling of encountering something that doesn't quite belong in the natural landscape.