Crab, purple sun, and architect's T square Jostle each other's preciosity In the jelled air of seaside evening streets.
Headstones are bleaching on their mossy slope Where tongue-hued serpents slither. And among Fresh lime trees issue what currents of sound?
An amplitude of flutes. Unprinted sand Amasses contours from a brilliant sea. In lunar somnolence snails grip the rocks.
Albert Cook's "Unclassic Scene" is less a story than a series of images, and it helps to read it the way you'd look at a strange painting. A crab, a purple sun and an architect's T square all sit side by side, "jostling" each other, as if the natural world and the measured, human-made one can't quite agree on who owns the evening. The air is "jelled," thick and still.
The second stanza turns darker: headstones bleaching on a mossy slope, snakes sliding between them. Then a question breaks in. What is that sound coming from the lime trees? The answer is gentle and surprising, a full "amplitude of flutes."
The speaker never says how they feel, but the mood is dreamy, slightly uneasy and strangely beautiful. Death, music, sea and sleepy snails gripping rocks all blur into one hushed, moonlit trance. The title's "unclassic" fits, since nothing here sits in a neat, tidy order.