A short poem exploring the darker stories, myths and legends surrounding Loe Pool in Helston by Joshua Schouten de Jel.
Every seven years somebody dies down there.
A Helston grocers’ wife committed suicide;
The son of a local farmer, aged twenty seven,
Drowned after his horse bolted from a stone gap;
After the Second World War two airmen crashed
Into the mud-fast depths and couldn’t be recovered;
A group of friends, out celebrating New Year’s Eve,
Were taken under by rough waves and a body,
Sea-cold, was spotted by a fisherman the next day;
A spurned husband packed his pockets with rocks;
A walker, not local, slipped with the shifting sands.
The pool, even on a clear day, is beautifully cold
And only cut from the ocean by a slight shingle cord.
Waves can rise like full moons on one side, blue
And bone-bright, and fall flat beside a drift of stars
Upon the other: a mirror of feet beneath the light.
A lady won’t go down there by herself; she says
There’s nothing human, only something uncanny.
Is the boy who went to retrieve his ball still searching?
Were the girl bathers ever watched by the faceless man?
The curse is a myth, and like all myths it is a truth
Explained through stories, through us: the living.
