178 Ocean poems

Take hold of the bitter end; pass carefully around the standing part, being mindful of the bight. Finish with a round turn, make the knot up tight and it will not slip under load. But you'll find it not so easily undone; dangerous in the dark and cold and wet, when it matters most. These knots command allegiances. The Turk's head and midshipman's bend, the lighterman's hitch and the hangman's noose. See what names mean: Knots are men. Facing page—a simple eye-splice. Apply a whipping at the end so no strands come loose in the braid. The knot will hold Anything you care to bind.

She sang beyond the genius of the sea. The water never formed to mind or voice, Like a body wholly body, fluttering Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry, That was not ours although we understood, Inhuman, of the veritable ocean. The sea was not a mask. No more was she. The song and water were not medleyed sound Even if what she sang was what she heard, Since what she sang was uttered word by word. It may be that in all her phrases stirred The grinding water and the gasping wind; But it was she and not the sea we heard. For she was the maker of the song she sang. The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea Was merely a place by which she walked to sing. Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew It was the spirit that we sought and knew That we should ask this often as she sang. If it was only the dark voice of the sea That rose, or even colored by many waves; If it was only the outer voice of sky And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled, However clear, it would have been deep air, The heaving speech of air, a summer sound Repeated in a summer without end And sound alone. But it was more than that, More even than her voice, and ours, among The meaningless plungings of water and the wind, Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres Of sky and sea. It was her voice that made The sky acutest at its vanishing. She measured to the hour its solitude. She was the single artificer of the world In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea, Whatever self it had, became the self That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we, As we beheld her striding there alone, Knew that there never was a world for her Except the one she sang and, singing, made. Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know, Why, when the singing ended and we turned Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights, The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there, As the night descended, tilting in the air, Mastered the night and portioned out the sea, Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles, Arranging, deepening, enchanting night. Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon, The maker’s rage to order words of the sea, Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred, And of ourselves and of our origins, In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

I Beyond the hollow sunset, ere a star Take heart in heaven from eastward, while the west, Fulfilled of watery resonance and rest, Is as a port with clouds for harbour bar To fold the fleet in of the winds from far That stir no plume now of the bland sea's breast: II Above the soft sweep of the breathless bay Southwestward, far past flight of night and day, Lower than the sunken sunset sinks, and higher Than dawn can freak the front of heaven with fire, My thought with eyes and wings made wide makes way To find the place of souls that I desire. III If any place for any soul there be, Disrobed and disentrammelled; if the might, The fire and force that filled with ardent light The souls whose shadow is half the light we see, Survive and be suppressed not of the night; This hour should show what all day hid from me. IV Night knows not, neither is it shown to day, By sunlight nor by starlight is it shown, Nor to the full moon's eye nor footfall known, Their world's untrodden and unkindled way. Nor is the breath nor music of it blown With sounds of winter or with winds of May. V But here, where light and darkness reconciled Held earth between them as a weanling child Between the balanced hands of death and birth, Even as they held the new-born shape of earth When first life trembled in her limbs and smiled, Here hope might think to find what hope were worth. VI Past Hades, past Elysium, past the long Slow smooth strong lapse of Lethe—past the toil Wherein all souls are taken as a spoil, The Stygian web of waters—if your song Be quenched not, O our brethren, but be strong As ere ye too shook off our temporal coil; VII If yet these twain survive your worldly breath, Joy trampling sorrow, life devouring death, If perfect life possess your life all through And like your words your souls be deathless too, To-night, of all whom night encompasseth, My soul would commune with one soul of you. VIII Above the sunset might I see thine eyes That were above the sundawn in our skies, Son of the songs of morning,—thine that were First lights to lighten that rekindling air Wherethrough men saw the front of England rise And heard thine loudest of the lyre-notes there— IX If yet thy fire have not one spark the less, O Titan, born of her a Titaness, Across the sunrise and the sunset's mark Send of thy lyre one sound, thy fire one spark, To change this face of our unworthiness, Across this hour dividing light from dark. X To change this face of our chill time, that hears No song like thine of all that crowd its ears, Of all its lights that lighten all day long Sees none like thy most fleet and fiery sphere's Outlightening Sirius—in its twilight throng No thunder and no sunrise like thy song. XI Hath not the sea-wind swept the sea-line bare To pave with stainless fire through stainless air A passage for thine heavenlier feet to tread Ungrieved of earthly floor-work? hath it spread No covering splendid as the sun-god's hair To veil or to reveal thy lordlier head? XII Hath not the sunset strewn across the sea A way majestical enough for thee? What hour save this should be thine hour—and mine, If thou have care of any less divine Than thine own soul; if thou take thought of me, Marlowe, as all my soul takes thought of thine? XIII Before the morn's face as before the sun The morning star and evening star are one For all men's lands as England. O, if night Hang hard upon us,—ere our day take flight, Shed thou some comfort from thy day long done On us pale children of the latter light! XIV For surely, brother and master and lord and king, Where'er thy footfall and thy face make spring In all souls' eyes that meet thee wheresoe'er, And have thy soul for sunshine and sweet air— Some late love of thine old live land should cling, Some living love of England, round thee there. XV Here from her shore across her sunniest sea My soul makes question of the sun for thee, And waves and beams make answer. When thy feet Made her ways flowerier and their flowers more sweet With childlike passage of a god to be, Like spray these waves cast off her foemen's fleet. XVI Like foam they flung it from her, and like weed Its wrecks were washed from scornful shoal to shoal, From rock to rock reverberate; and the whole Sea laughed and lightened with a deathless deed That sowed our enemies in her field for seed And made her shores fit harbourage for thy soul. XVII Then in her green south fields, a poor man's child, Thou hadst thy short sweet fill of half-blown joy, That ripens all of us for time to cloy With full-blown pain and passion; ere the wild World caught thee by the fiery heart, and smiled To make so swift end of the godlike boy. XVIII For thou, if ever godlike foot there trod These fields of ours, wert surely like a god. Who knows what splendour of strange dreams was shed With sacred shadow and glimmer of gold and red From hallowed windows, over stone and sod, On thine unbowed bright insubmissive head? XIX The shadow stayed not, but the splendour stays, Our brother, till the last of English days. No day nor night on English earth shall be For ever, spring nor summer, Junes nor Mays, But somewhat as a sound or gleam of thee Shall come on us like morning from the sea. XX Like sunrise never wholly risen, nor yet Quenched; or like sunset never wholly set, A light to lighten as from living eyes The cold unlit close lids of one that lies Dead, or a ray returned from death's far skies To fire us living lest our lives forget. XXI For in that heaven what light of lights may be, What splendour of what stars, what spheres of flame Sounding, that none may number nor may name, We know not, even thy brethren; yea, not we Whose eyes desire the light that lightened thee, Whose ways and thine are one way and the same. XXII But if the riddles that in sleep we read, And trust them not, be flattering truth indeed, As he that rose our mightiest called them,—he, Much higher than thou as thou much higher than we— There, might we say, all flower of all our seed, All singing souls are as one sounding sea. XXIII All those that here were of thy kind and kin, Beside thee and below thee, full of love, Full-souled for song,—and one alone above Whose only light folds all your glories in— With all birds' notes from nightingale to dove Fill the world whither we too fain would win. XXIV The world that sees in heaven the sovereign light Of sunlike Shakespeare, and the fiery night Whose stars were watched of Webster; and beneath, The twin-souled brethren of the single wreath, Grown in kings' gardens, plucked from pastoral heath, Wrought with all flowers for all men's heart's delight. XXV And that fixed fervour, iron-red like Mars, In the mid moving tide of tenderer stars, That burned on loves and deeds the darkest done, Athwart the incestuous prisoner's bride-house bars; And thine, most highest of all their fires but one, Our morning star, sole risen before the sun. XXVI And one light risen since theirs to run such race Thou hast seen, O Phosphor, from thy pride of place. Thou hast seen Shelley, him that was to thee As light to fire or dawn to lightning; me, Me likewise, O our brother, shalt thou see, And I behold thee, face to glorious face? XXVII You twain the same swift year of manhood swept Down the steep darkness, and our father wept. And from the gleam of Apollonian tears A holier aureole rounds your memories, kept Most fervent-fresh of all the singing spheres, And April-coloured through all months and years. XXVIII You twain fate spared not half your fiery span; The longer date fulfils the lesser man. Ye from beyond the dark dividing date Stand smiling, crowned as gods with foot on fate. For stronger was your blessing than his ban, And earliest whom he struck, he struck too late. XXIX Yet love and loathing, faith and unfaith yet Bind less to greater souls in unison, And one desire that makes three spirits as one Takes great and small as in one spiritual net Woven out of hope toward what shall yet be done Ere hate or love remember or forget. XXX Woven out of faith and hope and love too great To bear the bonds of life and death and fate: Woven out of love and hope and faith too dear To take the print of doubt and change and fear: And interwoven with lines of wrath and hate Blood-red with soils of many a sanguine year. XXXI Who cannot hate, can love not; if he grieve, His tears are barren as the unfruitful rain That rears no harvest from the green sea's plain, And as thorns crackling this man's laugh is vain. Nor can belief touch, kindle, smite, reprieve His heart who has not heart to disbelieve. XXXII But you, most perfect in your hate and love, Our great twin-spirited brethren; you that stand Head by head glittering, hand made fast in hand, And underfoot the fang-drawn worm that strove To wound you living; from so far above, Look love, not scorn, on ours that was your land. XXXIII For love we lack, and help and heat and light To clothe us and to comfort us with might. What help is ours to take or give? but ye— O, more than sunrise to the blind cold sea, That wailed aloud with all her waves all night, Much more, being much more glorious, should you be. XXXIV As fire to frost, as ease to toil, as dew To flowerless fields, as sleep to slackening pain, As hope to souls long weaned from hope again Returning, or as blood revived anew To dry-drawn limbs and every pulseless vein, Even so toward us should no man be but you. XXXV One rose before the sunrise was, and one Before the sunset, lovelier than the sun. And now the heaven is dark and bright and loud With wind and starry drift and moon and cloud, And night's cry rings in straining sheet and shroud, What help is ours if hope like yours be none? XXXVI O well-beloved, our brethren, if ye be, Then are we not forsaken. This kind earth Made fragrant once for all time with your birth, And bright for all men with your love, and worth The clasp and kiss and wedlock of the sea, Were not your mother if not your brethren we. XXXVII Because the days were dark with gods and kings And in time's hand the old hours of time as rods, When force and fear set hope and faith at odds, Ye failed not nor abased your plume-plucked wings; And we that front not more disastrous things, How should we fail in face of kings and gods? XXXVIII For now the deep dense plumes of night are thinned Surely with winnowing of the glimmering wind Whose feet we fledged with morning; and the breath Begins in heaven that sings the dark to death. And all the night wherein men groaned and sinned Sickens at heart to hear what sundawn saith. XXXIX O first-born sons of hope and fairest, ye Whose prows first clove the thought-unsounded sea Whence all the dark dead centuries rose to bar The spirit of man lest truth should make him free, The sunrise and the sunset, seeing one star, Take heart as we to know you that ye are. XL Ye rise not and ye set not; we that say Ye rise and set like hopes that set and rise Look yet but seaward from a land-locked bay; But where at last the sea's line is the sky's And truth and hope one sunlight in your eyes, No sunrise and no sunset marks their day.

Huge vapours brood above the clifted shore, Night o'er the ocean settles, dark and mute, Save where is heard the repercussive roar Of drowsy billows, on the rugged foot Of rocks remote; or still more distant tone Of seamen, in the anchored bark, that tell The watch relieved; or one deep voice alone, Singing the hour, and bidding "strike the bell." All is black shadow, but the lucid line Marked by the light surf on the level sand, Or where afar, the ship-lights faintly shine Like wandering fairy fires, that oft on land Mislead the pilgrim; such the dubious ray That wavering reason lends, in life's long darkling way.

I expected something up out of the water not the shadow in the wave that rose to fill the wave then splash a breath off the abutting air      then disappear. I didn't see any of this         only the dark wave.         Even the size of a whale I don't see        what I look directly at. I didn't see the pronghorn antelope, speed they pointed out equal our car's, but never having seen distance so large I couldn't pin in it      point to antler and saw in parallax instead       the world entire a still brown arc of leap      so like a first look at the milky way       each stone a star I saw but could not see. I didn't see the Nazca earth drawings looking at a line like a path      the vision on it   my not looking up. & trying to see from on the ground looking from a plane thousands of feet above maybe I saw only what the unenlightened marking out the lines could see from there because I never saw the figures until shown from books. I've told folk half the truth      that I was there I was but embarrassed      never told      I missed my chance until I saw:       without embarrassment this country miss its chance   looking at color and not see what it looked directly at, without embarrassment act      and not see that done on its own hands      not see its own bright blood.

Highlight Actions Enable or disable annotations I started Early – Took my Dog – And visited the Sea – The Mermaids in the Basement Basement i.e., the bottom of the ocean Came out to look at me – And Frigates Frigates fast and highly maneuverable warships of the 18th and 19th centuries, used to escort other larger ships, or to patrol the coast and blockade harbors – in the Upper Floor Extended Hempen Hands Hempen Hands strong, thick ropes made of hemp, used on ships – Presuming Me to be a Mouse – Aground – opon opon upon the Sands – But no Man moved Me – till the Tide Went past my simple Shoe – And past my Apron – and my Belt And past my Boddice Boddice bodice; an upper part of a woman’s dress, or a rigid, laced corset worn underneath clothing, covering the upper part of a woman’s body – too – And made as He would eat me up – As wholly as a Dew Opon a Dandelion's Sleeve – And then – I started – too – And He – He followed – close behind – I felt His Silver Heel Opon my Ancle – Then My Shoes Would overflow with Pearl – Until We met the Solid Town – No One He seemed to know – And bowing – with a Mighty look – At me – The Sea withdrew –

Off what Thornbjörg calls the stern, or what I refer to as where you look upon the place you cannot return, one broke on through. With little purpose but to tease, eye our sound ship, or take leave of the dog whistle our prop pitches ineptly into the eerie. Suturing the path to where it was bound, it hung split seconds in a realm unsoundable by its sonar. If only we could enter our dreams thus. The cruise ship’s marriage counselor spoke to me in Norwegian, and I agreed, knowing there was only so much she could have said as it took the sun—and unlike beach stones once you get them home, kept its sodden hue going black into sea.

The great sea frees me, moves me, as a strong river carries a weed. Earth and her strong winds move me, take me away, and my soul is swept up in joy.

This is a poem about the great ships that wandered the oceans And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog and submerged peaks, But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas in silence, Divided by height, category, and class, just like our communities and hotels. Beneath the deck poor emigrants played cards, and no one won While on the highest deck Claudel gazed at Ysé and her hair glowed. And toasts were raised to a safe trip, to coming times, Toasts were raised, Alsatian wine and champagne from France's finest vineyards, Some days were static, windless, when only the light seeped steadily, Days when nothing happened but the horizon, which traveled with the ship, Days of emptiness and boredom, playing solitaire, repeating the latest news, Who'd been seen with whom in a tropical night's shade, embracing beneath a peach-colored moon. But filthy stokers tirelessly tossed coal into open flaming mouths And everything that is now already existed then, but in condensed form. Our days already existed and our hearts baked in the blazing stove, And the moment when I met you may also have existed, and my mistrust Brittle as a faience plate, and my faith, no less frail and capricious, And my searches for the final answer, my disappointments and discoveries. Great ships: some sunk suddenly, arousing consciences and fear, Gaining deathless fame, becoming stars of special bulletins. Others went peacefully, waned without a word in provincial ports, in dockyards, Beneath a coat of rust, a ruddy fur of rust, a slipcover of rust, and waited For the final transformation, the last judgment of souls and objects, They wait as patiently as chess players in Luxembourg Garden nudging pieces a fraction of an inch or so.

My soul and I went to the great sea to bathe.  And when we reached the shore, we went about looking for a hidden and lonely place. But as we walked, we saw a man sitting on a grey rock taking pinches of salt from a bag and throwing them into the sea. “This is the pessimist,” said my soul, “Let us leave this place. We cannot bathe here.” We walked on until we reached an inlet.  There we saw, standing on a white rock, a man holding a bejeweled box, from which he took sugar and threw it into the sea. “And this is the optimist,” said my soul, “And he too must not see our naked bodies.” Further on we walked.  And on a beach we saw a man picking up dead fish and tenderly putting them back into the water. “And we cannot bathe before him,” said my soul.  “He is the humane philanthropist.” And we passed on. Then we came where we saw a man tracing his shadow on the sand. Great waves came and erased it.  But he went on tracing it again and again. “He is the mystic,” said my soul, “Let us leave him.” And we walked on, till in a quiet cover we saw a man scooping up the foam and putting it into an alabaster bowl. “He is the idealist,” said my soul, “Surely he must not see our nudity.” And on we walked.  Suddenly we heard a voice crying, “This is the sea.  This is the deep sea.  This is the vast and mighty sea.” And when we reached the voice it was a man whose back was turned to the sea, and at his ear he held a shell, listening to its murmur. And my soul said, “Let us pass on.  He is the realist, who turns his back on the whole he cannot grasp, and busies himself with a fragment.” So we passed on.  And in a weedy place among the rocks was a man with his head buried in the sand.  And I said to my soul, “We can bath here, for he cannot see us.” “Nay,” said my soul, “For he is the most deadly of them all.  He is the puritan.” Then a great sadness came over the face of my soul, and into her voice. “Let us go hence,” she said, “For there is no lonely, hidden place where we can bathe.  I would not have this wind lift my golden hair, or bare my white bosom in this air, or let the light disclose my sacred nakedness.” Then we left that sea to seek the Greater Sea.