Port of Aerial Embarkation

There is no widening distance at the shore— The sea revolving slowly from the piers— But the one border of our take-off roar And we are mounted on the hemispheres. Above the waning moon whose almanac We wait to finish continents away, The Northern stars already call us back, And silence folds like maps on all we say. Under the sky, a stadium tensed to cry The ringside savage thrumming of the fights, We watch our engines, taut and trained for sky, Arranged on fields of concrete flowered with lights. Day after day we fondle and repeat A jeweler’s adjustment on a screw; Or wander past the bulletins to meet And wander back to watch the sky be blue. Somehow we see ourselves in photographs Held in our hands to show us back our pride When, aging, we recall in epitaphs The faces just behind and to each side. The nights keep perfect silence. In the dark You feel the faces soften into sleep, Or tense upon the fraught and falling arc Of fear a boy had buried not too deep. Finally we stand by and consciously Measure the double sense of all our talk, And, everyman his dramatist, anxiously Corrects his role, his gesture, and his walk.