178 Ocean poems

The seas has made a wall for its defence of falling water. Those whose impertinence leads them to its moving ledges it rejects. Those who surrender it will with the next wave drag under. Sand is the beginning and the end of our dominion. The way to the dunes is easy. The shelving sand is stiffened in the rain and loosened again in the sun’s fingers. Children, lustful of the glistening hours drink and are insatiate. Wind under the eyelids, confusion walling their ears, their bodies glow in the cold wash of the beach. And after, they walk with rigid feet the planked street of the town. They miss the slipping texture of the sand and a sand pillow under the hollow instep. They are unmoved by fears that breed in darkening kitchens at sundown following storm, and they rebel against cold waiting in the wind and rain for the late sail. Did you, as I, condemn the coastal fog and long for islands seen from a sail’s shadow? The dunes lie more passive to the wind than water is. This, then, the country of our choice. It is infertile, narrow, prone under a dome of choral sound: water breaking upon water. Litter of bare logs in the drift— the sea has had its sharp word with them. Wild roses, wild strawberries cover the dune shoulder It is a naked restless garden that descends from the crouched pine to shellfish caught in flat reflecting sands. We lose the childish avarice of horizons. The sea ends against another shore. The cracked ribs of a wreck project from the washed beach. Under the shell-encrusted timbers dripping brine plucks at the silence of slant chambers opening seaward. What moving keel remembers such things as here are buried under sand? The transitory ponds and smooth bar slide easily under the advancing tide, emerging with the moon’s turning. Clear lagoons behind the shattered hulk, thin movements of sea grass on the dune rim bending against cloud, these things are oursI Submissive to the sea and wind, resistful of all else, sand is the beginning and the end of our dominion.

Lulled in a nook of North West Bay, The water swells against the sand, Hardly more liquid than Venetian glass, In which clear surface, just a little way From shore, some four or five petite yachts pass With languid ease, apparently unmanned, Adrift along the day, Imagining a breeze to fan Their motion, though there's none. Siobhan Reaches a giant hand down from the sky And nudges with insouciant élan The nearest hull, her bended waist mast-high. That hand is just as magically withdrawn. So moves the catamaran. And through the Lilliputian fleet She, Beatrice and Gabrielle Wade in the shallows, knee-deep, spaceman-slow, To fashion their maneuvers and compete Among the stationed hours to and fro, While watching through the viscid slide and swell Of water their white feet, Made curiously whiter by That cool light-bending element. Doubled by shadows on the sand they glimpse Pipefish and darting fingerlings they try Impossibly to grab, translucent shrimps Among the laceweed, seahorses intent To flee the peopled sky. Hard to conceive that they should be Precisely who they are and here, Lost in the idle luxury of play. And hard to credit that the selfsame sea That joins them in their idleness today, Careless of latitude and hemisphere, Blind with ubiquity, Churns elsewhere with a white uproar, Or wipes the Slave Coast clean of trees, Or sucks among the scum and floating drums Of some forgotten outpost founded for The advent of an age that never comes, Or bobs the remnants of atrocities Limply against the shore. What luck they have. And what good sense To leave the water with their toys When called, before their fortunes are deranged. And still the day hangs in its late suspense For hours without them, virtually unchanged, Until the bay's impregnable turquoise Relaxes its defense And sunset's dye begins to spread In flood across it to the sand They stood on, as though, hoping to disown The blood of all the innocents he'd shed, Macbeth incarnate or his grisly clone Had stooped on some far shore to rinse his hand, Making the green one red.

Seaside, and the fragment of one running— calves, ribs, green eyes into water. There he goes. Waves. Buoying up as into sky. And the seagulls fly, seeing it as relief, a story. Once they were there, two on a white blanket. The circumference of a shadow. Sunlight around that shadow. The relation of two: bathers, robed figures configured as one. And she touches him—tender—and it is done. (I've gone back to it. I've, I've— it's not where I am. I give it away again.) You're there. It's still in the sand. It's trying to chisel it in. How it comes forth: the story. Wanting it, carving it down to vision. Architecture, a coliseum of bent light, the beautiful scatter of broken stones. (And I can turn it into stones.) Love, love: a portico, a labyrinth. And his simple aquatics, legs and arms in the brackish, etched against white fish. The song, under there, of how he'll leave, and naturally, like all living things: animals, summer, daylight for the eves. And the buildings, all shadows and beings: block, angels, curves. With the love, memory of all loves. The pediments, these reliquaries. It's our landscape, artifact—it might hurt. (Run to, run away from it.)

The ribs and terrors in the whale, Arched over me a dismal gloom, While all God’s sun-lit waves rolled by, And left me deepening down to doom. I saw the opening maw of hell, With endless pains and sorrows there; Which none but they that feel can tell— Oh, I was plunging to despair. In black distress, I called my God, When I could scarce believe him mine, He bowed his ear to my complaints— No more the whale did me confine. With speed he flew to my relief, As on a radiant dolphin borne; Awful, yet bright, as lightening shone The face of my Deliverer God. My song for ever shall record That terrible, that joyful hour; I give the glory to my God, His all the mercy and the power.

Argument How a Ship having passed the Line was driven by storms to the cold Country towards the South Pole; and how from thence she made her course to the tropical Latitude of the Great Pacific Ocean; and of the strange things that befell; and in what manner the Ancyent Marinere came back to his own Country. PART I It is an ancient Mariner, And he stoppeth one of three. 'By thy long grey beard and glittering eye, Now wherefore stopp'st thou me? The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide, And I am next of kin; The guests are met, the feast is set: May'st hear the merry din.' He holds him with his skinny hand, 'There was a ship,' quoth he. 'Hold off! unhand me, grey-beard loon!' Eftsoons his hand dropt he. He holds him with his glittering eye— The Wedding-Guest stood still, And listens like a three years' child: The Mariner hath his will. The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone: He cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. 'The ship was cheered, the harbour cleared, Merrily did we drop Below the kirk, below the hill, Below the lighthouse top. The Sun came up upon the left, Out of the sea came he! And he shone bright, and on the right Went down into the sea. Higher and higher every day, Till over the mast at noon—' The Wedding-Guest here beat his breast, For he heard the loud bassoon. The bride hath paced into the hall, Red as a rose is she; Nodding their heads before her goes The merry minstrelsy. The Wedding-Guest he beat his breast, Yet he cannot choose but hear; And thus spake on that ancient man, The bright-eyed Mariner. And now the STORM-BLAST came, and he Was tyrannous and strong: He struck with his o'ertaking wings, And chased us south along. With sloping masts and dipping prow, As who pursued with yell and blow Still treads the shadow of his foe, And forward bends his head, The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast, And southward aye we fled. And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold: And ice, mast-high, came floating by, As green as emerald. And through the drifts the snowy clifts Did send a dismal sheen: Nor shapes of men nor beasts we ken— The ice was all between. The ice was here, the ice was there, The ice was all around: It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound! At length did cross an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in God's name. It ate the food it ne'er had eat, And round and round it flew. The ice did split with a thunder-fit; The helmsman steered us through! And a good south wind sprung up behind; The Albatross did follow, And every day, for food or play, Came to the mariner's hollo! In mist or cloud, on mast or shroud, It perched for vespers nine; Whiles all the night, through fog-smoke white, Glimmered the white Moon-shine.' 'God save thee, ancient Mariner! From the fiends, that plague thee thus!— Why look'st thou so?'—With my cross-bow I shot the ALBATROSS. PART II The Sun now rose upon the right: Out of the sea came he, Still hid in mist, and on the left Went down into the sea. And the good south wind still blew behind, But no sweet bird did follow, Nor any day for food or play Came to the mariner's hollo! And I had done a hellish thing, And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow! Nor dim nor red, like God's own head, The glorious Sun uprist: Then all averred, I had killed the bird That brought the fog and mist. 'Twas right, said they, such birds to slay, That bring the fog and mist. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, The furrow followed free; We were the first that ever burst Into that silent sea. Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the Moon. Day after day, day after day, We stuck, nor breath nor motion; As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean. Water, water, every where, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, every where, Nor any drop to drink. The very deep did rot: O Christ! That ever this should be! Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs Upon the slimy sea. About, about, in reel and rout The death-fires danced at night; The water, like a witch's oils, Burnt green, and blue and white. And some in dreams assurèd were Of the Spirit that plagued us so; Nine fathom deep he had followed us From the land of mist and snow. And every tongue, through utter drought, Was withered at the root; We could not speak, no more than if We had been choked with soot. Ah! well a-day! what evil looks Had I from old and young! Instead of the cross, the Albatross About my neck was hung. PART III There passed a weary time. Each throat Was parched, and glazed each eye. A weary time! a weary time! How glazed each weary eye, When looking westward, I beheld A something in the sky. At first it seemed a little speck, And then it seemed a mist; It moved and moved, and took at last A certain shape, I wist. A speck, a mist, a shape, I wist! And still it neared and neared: As if it dodged a water-sprite, It plunged and tacked and veered. With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, We could nor laugh nor wail; Through utter drought all dumb we stood! I bit my arm, I sucked the blood, And cried, A sail! a sail! With throats unslaked, with black lips baked, Agape they heard me call: Gramercy! they for joy did grin, And all at once their breath drew in. As they were drinking all. See! see! (I cried) she tacks no more! Hither to work us weal; Without a breeze, without a tide, She steadies with upright keel! The western wave was all a-flame. The day was well nigh done! Almost upon the western wave Rested the broad bright Sun; When that strange shape drove suddenly Betwixt us and the Sun. And straight the Sun was flecked with bars, (Heaven's Mother send us grace!) As if through a dungeon-grate he peered With broad and burning face. Alas! (thought I, and my heart beat loud) How fast she nears and nears! Are those her sails that glance in the Sun, Like restless gossameres? Are those her ribs through which the Sun Did peer, as through a grate? And is that Woman all her crew? Is that a DEATH? and are there two? Is DEATH that woman's mate? Her lips were red,her looks were free, Her locks were yellow as gold: Her skin was as white as leprosy, The Night-mare LIFE-IN-DEATH was she, Who thicks man's blood with cold. The naked hulk alongside came, And the twain were casting dice; 'The game is done! I've won! I've won!' Quoth she, and whistles thrice. The Sun's rim dips; the stars rush out; At one stride comes the dark; With far-heard whisper, o'er the sea, Off shot the spectre-bark. We listened and looked sideways up! Fear at my heart, as at a cup, My life-blood seemed to sip! The stars were dim, and thick the night, The steersman's face by his lamp gleamed white; From the sails the dew did drip— Till clomb above the eastern bar The hornèd Moon, with one bright star Within the nether tip. One after one, by the star-dogged Moon, Too quick for groan or sigh, Each turned his face with a ghastly pang, And cursed me with his eye. Four times fifty living men, (And I heard nor sigh nor groan) With heavy thump, a lifeless lump, They dropped down one by one. The souls did from their bodies fly,— They fled to bliss or woe! And every soul, it passed me by, Like the whizz of my cross-bow! PART IV 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner! I fear thy skinny hand! And thou art long, and lank, and brown, As is the ribbed sea-sand. I fear thee and thy glittering eye, And thy skinny hand, so brown.'— Fear not, fear not, thou Wedding-Guest! This body dropt not down. Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea! And never a saint took pity on My soul in agony. The many men, so beautiful! And they all dead did lie: And a thousand thousand slimy things Lived on; and so did I. I looked upon the rotting sea, And drew my eyes away; I looked upon the rotting deck, And there the dead men lay. I looked to heaven, and tried to pray; But or ever a prayer had gusht, A wicked whisper came, and made My heart as dry as dust. I closed my lids, and kept them close, And the balls like pulses beat; For the sky and the sea, and the sea and the sky Lay dead like a load on my weary eye, And the dead were at my feet. The cold sweat melted from their limbs, Nor rot nor reek did they: The look with which they looked on me Had never passed away. An orphan's curse would drag to hell A spirit from on high; But oh! more horrible than that Is the curse in a dead man's eye! Seven days, seven nights, I saw that curse, And yet I could not die. The moving Moon went up the sky, And no where did abide: Softly she was going up, And a star or two beside— Her beams bemocked the sultry main, Like April hoar-frost spread; But where the ship's huge shadow lay, The charmèd water burnt alway A still and awful red. Beyond the shadow of the ship, I watched the water-snakes: They moved in tracks of shining white, And when they reared, the elfish light Fell off in hoary flakes. Within the shadow of the ship I watched their rich attire: Blue, glossy green, and velvet black, They coiled and swam; and every track Was a flash of golden fire. O happy living things! no tongue Their beauty might declare: A spring of love gushed from my heart, And I blessed them unaware: Sure my kind saint took pity on me, And I blessed them unaware. The self-same moment I could pray; And from my neck so free The Albatross fell off, and sank Like lead into the sea. PART V Oh sleep! it is a gentle thing, Beloved from pole to pole! To Mary Queen the praise be given! She sent the gentle sleep from Heaven, That slid into my soul. The silly buckets on the deck, That had so long remained, I dreamt that they were filled with dew; And when I awoke, it rained. My lips were wet, my throat was cold, My garments all were dank; Sure I had drunken in my dreams, And still my body drank. I moved, and could not feel my limbs: I was so light—almost I thought that I had died in sleep, And was a blessed ghost. And soon I heard a roaring wind: It did not come anear; But with its sound it shook the sails, That were so thin and sere. The upper air burst into life! And a hundred fire-flags sheen, To and fro they were hurried about! And to and fro, and in and out, The wan stars danced between. And the coming wind did roar more loud, And the sails did sigh like sedge, And the rain poured down from one black cloud; The Moon was at its edge. The thick black cloud was cleft, and still The Moon was at its side: Like waters shot from some high crag, The lightning fell with never a jag, A river steep and wide. The loud wind never reached the ship, Yet now the ship moved on! Beneath the lightning and the Moon The dead men gave a groan. They groaned, they stirred, they all uprose, Nor spake, nor moved their eyes; It had been strange, even in a dream, To have seen those dead men rise. The helmsman steered, the ship moved on; Yet never a breeze up-blew; The mariners all 'gan work the ropes, Where they were wont to do; They raised their limbs like lifeless tools— We were a ghastly crew. The body of my brother's son Stood by me, knee to knee: The body and I pulled at one rope, But he said nought to me. 'I fear thee, ancient Mariner!' Be calm, thou Wedding-Guest! 'Twas not those souls that fled in pain, Which to their corses came again, But a troop of spirits blest: For when it dawned—they dropped their arms, And clustered round the mast; Sweet sounds rose slowly through their mouths, And from their bodies passed. Around, around, flew each sweet sound, Then darted to the Sun; Slowly the sounds came back again, Now mixed, now one by one. Sometimes a-dropping from the sky I heard the sky-lark sing; Sometimes all little birds that are, How they seemed to fill the sea and air With their sweet jargoning! And now 'twas like all instruments, Now like a lonely flute; And now it is an angel's song, That makes the heavens be mute. It ceased; yet still the sails made on A pleasant noise till noon, A noise like of a hidden brook In the leafy month of June, That to the sleeping woods all night Singeth a quiet tune. Till noon we quietly sailed on, Yet never a breeze did breathe: Slowly and smoothly went the ship, Moved onward from beneath. Under the keel nine fathom deep, From the land of mist and snow, The spirit slid: and it was he That made the ship to go. The sails at noon left off their tune, And the ship stood still also. The Sun, right up above the mast, Had fixed her to the ocean: But in a minute she 'gan stir, With a short uneasy motion— Backwards and forwards half her length With a short uneasy motion. Then like a pawing horse let go, She made a sudden bound: It flung the blood into my head, And I fell down in a swound. How long in that same fit I lay, I have not to declare; But ere my living life returned, I heard and in my soul discerned Two voices in the air. 'Is it he?' quoth one, 'Is this the man? By him who died on cross, With his cruel bow he laid full low The harmless Albatross. The spirit who bideth by himself In the land of mist and snow, He loved the bird that loved the man Who shot him with his bow.' The other was a softer voice, As soft as honey-dew: Quoth he, 'The man hath penance done, And penance more will do.' PART VI

1 Water roared everywhere around us, yet from the bank all we could see of it were quick spumes and flashes here and there, in among the boulders. Cautiously, as if they might awaken, we clambered over the gigantic slabs and humps, the sun-baked ovals lumpy as hammered clay, and saw downstream below us only the vague shapes of others, almost billowy, like magnified amoebas, stretching away to even vaguer ones beyond them, turning the narrow streambed through the valley to a lunar seam. 2 Easing ourselves down over the massive sides (we were hot and tired, eager for the pools below) we could make out older water in the rough grain, undulating and immobile currents, band swirled on band, mica-speckled, cloudy, each seeming to move off, as it faded, through the stone—each one a glacial rune, each boulder an innumerable pebble in the ice sheet’s tidal suck and drag: two hundred thousand years, two billion, five, the molten core, spoor of gasses in the vast night, at our fingertips. 3 Then the pool: your clothes shed, with one hand braced against the rock ledge you had slipped into the hip-high rushing water, and were wading out, bent over, reaching like the blind before you for the slippery boulder you slid across, pushing against the white weight of the pouring mist, your skin goose-fleshed, speckled bright as mica, and then, part mist yourself, you turned back, smiling, calling though I couldn’t hear you, calling and waving for me to climb down to where you were, to join you there. And so I did.

Accept my need and let me call you brother, Slate blue oyster, wet sand crustacean, In your hurrying to burrow, wait. Hover. Parse opening’s disaster to creation’s Slate, to another blue-eyed monstrous sand crustacean, Water-bearer. Hear the ocean behind me, Pursued, asking to be opened, asking Creation To heed the tides that uncover you nightly. Water-bearer, wear the water beside me, Hide your burying shadow from the shorebirds, But heed the tides that uncover you nightly. Gems in sandcastles, stick-written words, Hidden from the shadows of shorebirds, Washed over by water. Waters revelatory Gems, sand, castles, sticks, words— Assured of erasure, voluntary erosion. Watched over with warrior resolution, Crab armor, claws, and nautilus heart, Assured of a savior, reconstruct your evolution, Clamor to hear, water scarab, what the tampered heart hears. A scarab’s armor is light enough to fly. In your hurry to burrow, wait. Hover. Hear the clamor of the crustacean’s heart. Heed this call of creation. Call me brother.

On the beach at night, Stands a child with her father, Watching the east, the autumn sky. Up through the darkness, While ravening clouds, the burial clouds, in black masses spreading, Lower sullen and fast athwart and down the sky, Amid a transparent clear belt of ether yet left in the east, Ascends large and calm the lord-star Jupiter, And nigh at hand, only a very little above, Swim the delicate sisters the Pleiades. From the beach the child holding the hand of her father, Those burial-clouds that lower victorious soon to devour all, Watching, silently weeps. Weep not, child, Weep not, my darling, With these kisses let me remove your tears, The ravening clouds shall not long be victorious, They shall not long possess the sky, they devour the stars only in apparition, Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another night, the Pleiades shall emerge, They are immortal, all those stars both silvery and golden shall shine out again, The great stars and the little ones shall shine out again, they endure, The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive moons shall again shine. Then dearest child mournest thou only for Jupiter? Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars? Something there is, (With my lips soothing thee, adding I whisper, I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,) Something there is more immortal even than the stars, (Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,) Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter Longer than sun or any revolving satellite, Or the radiant sisters the Pleiades.

On the beach at night alone, As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song, As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future. A vast similitude interlocks all, All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets, All distances of place however wide, All distances of time, all inanimate forms, All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds, All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes, All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages, All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe, All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future, This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d, And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.

I set forth one misted white day of June Beneath the great Atlantic rainway, and heard: “Honestly you smite worlds of truth, but Lose your own trains of thought, like a pigeon. Did you once ride in Kenneth’s machine?” “Yes, I rode there, an old man in shorts, blind, Who had lost his way in the filling station; Kenneth was kind.” “Did he fill your motionless ears with resonance and stain?” “No, he spoke not as a critic, but as a man.” “Tell me, what did he say?” “He said, ‘My eyes are the white sky, the gravel on the groundway my sad lament.’” “And yet he drives between the two. . . .” “Exactly, Jane, And that is the modern idea of fittingness, To, always in motion, lose nothing, although beneath the Rainway they move in threes and twos completely Ruined for themselves, like moving pictures.” “But how other?” “Formulalessness, to go from the sun Into love’s sweet disrepair. He would fondly express ‘Rain trees’—which is not a poem, ‘rain trees. . . .’” “Still, it is mysterious to have an engine That floats bouquets! and one day in the rear-vision Mirror of his car we vowed delight, The insufficiency of the silverware in the sunlight, The dreams he steals from and smiles, losing gain.” “Yet always beneath the rainway unsyntactical Beauty might leap up!” “That we might sing From smiles’ ravines, ‘Rose, the reverse of everything, May be profaned or talked at like a hat.’” “Oh that was sweet and short, like the minuet Of stars, which would permit us to seem our best friends By silver’s eminent lights! For nature is so small, ends Falsely reign, distending the time we did Behind our hope for body-work, riding with Kenneth.” Their voicing ceased, then started again, to complain That we are offered nothing when it starts to rain In the same way, though we are dying for the truth.