The bows glided down, and the coast
|
Blackened with birds took a last look
|
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye;
|
The trodden town rang it’s cobbles for luck.
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Then good-bye to the fishermanned
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Boat with it’s anchor free and fast
|
As a bird hooking over the sea,
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High and dry by the top of the mast,
|
Whispered the affectionate sand
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And the bulwarks of the dazzled quay.
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For my sake sail, and never look back,
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Said the looking land.
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Sails drank the wind, and white as milk
|
He sped into the drinking dark;
|
The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
|
And the moon swam out of it’s hulk.
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Funnels and masts went by in a whirl.
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Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck
|
To the gold gut that sings on his reel
|
To the bait that stalked out of the sack,
|
For we saw him throw to the swift flood
|
A girl alive with his hooks through her lips;
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All the fishes were rayed in blood,
|
Said the dwindling ships.
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Good-bye to chimneys and funnels,
|
Old wives that spin in the smoke,
|
He was blind to the eyes of candles
|
In the praying windows of waves |
But heard his bait buck in the wake
|
And tussle in a shoal of loves.
|
Now cast down your rod, for the whole
|
Of the sea is hilly with whales,
|
She longs among horses and angels,
|
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys,
|
Floated the lost cathedral
|
Chimes of the rocked buoys.
|
Where the anchor rode like a gull
|
Miles over the moonstruck boat
|
A squall of birds bellowed and fell,
|
A cloud blew the rain from it’s throat;
|
He saw the storm smoke out to kill
|
With fuming bows and ram of ice,
|
Fire on starlight, rake Jesu’s stream;
|
And nothing shone on the water’s face
|
But the oil and bubble of the moon,
|
Plunging and piercing in his course
|
The lured fish under the foam
|
Witnessed with a kiss.
|
Whales in the wake like capes and Alps
|
Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep,
|
Deep the great bushed bait with raining lips
|
Slipped the fins of those humpbacked tons
|
And fled their love in a weaving dip.
|
Oh, Jericho was falling in their lungs!
|
She nipped and dived in the nick of love,
|
Spun on a spout like a long-legged ball
|
Till every beast blared down in a swerve |
Till every turtle crushed from his shell
|
Till every bone in the rushing grave
|
Rose and crowed and fell!
|
Good luck to the hand on the rod,
|
There is thunder under it’s thumbs;
|
Gold gut is a lightning thread,
|
His fiery reel sings off it’s flames,
|
The whirled boat in the burn of his blood
|
Is crying from nets to knives,
|
Oh the shearwater birds and their boatsized brood
|
Oh the bulls of Biscay and their calves
|
Are making under the green, laid veil
|
The long-legged beautiful bait their wives.
|
Break the black news and paint on a sail
|
Huge weddings in the waves,
|
Over the wakeward-flashing spray
|
Over the gardens of the floor
|
Clash out the mounting dolphin’s day,
|
My mast is a bell-spire,
|
Strike and smoothe, for my decks are drums,
|
Sing through the water-spoken prow
|
The octopus walking into her limbs
|
The polar eagle with his tread of snow.
|
From salt-lipped beak to the kick of the stern
|
Sing how the seal has kissed her dead!
|
The long, laid minute’s bride drifts on
|
Old in her cruel bed.
|
Over the graveyard in the water |
Mountains and galleries beneath
|
Nightingale and hyena
|
Rejoicing for that drifting death
|
Sing and howl through sand and anemone
|
Valley and sahara in a shell,
|
Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy
|
Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl
|
Is old as water and plain as an eel;
|
Always good-bye to the long-legged bread
|
Scattered in the paths of his heels
|
For the salty birds fluttered and fed
|
And the tall grains foamed in their bills;
|
Always good-bye to the fires of the face,
|
For the crab-backed dead on the sea-bed rose
|
And scuttled over her eyes,
|
The blind, clawed stare is cold as sleet.
|
The tempter under the eyelid
|
Who shows to the selves asleep
|
Mast-high moon-white women naked
|
Walking in wishes and lovely for shame
|
Is dumb and gone with his flame of brides.
|
Susannah’s drowned in the bearded stream
|
And no-one stirs at Sheba’s side
|
But the hungry kings of the tides;
|
Sin who had a woman’s shape
|
Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud
|
And all the lifted waters walk and leap.
|
Lucifer that bird’s dropping |
Out of the sides of the north
|
Has melted away and is lost
|
Is always lost in her vaulted breath,
|
Venus lies star-struck in her wound
|
And the sensual ruins make
|
Seasons over the liquid world,
|
White springs in the dark.
|
Always good-bye, cried the voices through the shell,
|
Good-bye always, for the flesh is cast
|
And the fisherman winds his reel
|
With no more desire than a ghost.
|
Always good luck, praised the finned in the feather
|
Bird after dark and the laughing fish
|
As the sails drank up the hail of thunder
|
And the long-tailed lightning lit his catch.
|
The boat swims into the six-year weather,
|
A wind throws a shadow and it freezes fast.
|
See what the gold gut drags from under
|
Mountains and galleries to the crest!
|
See what clings to hair and skull
|
As the boat skims on with drinking wings!
|
The statues of great rain stand still,
|
And the flakes fall like hills.
|
Sing and strike his heavy haul
|
Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light!
|
His decks are drenched with miracles.
|
Oh miracle of fishes! |
The long dead bite! |
Out of the urn a size of a man
|
Out of the room the weight of his trouble
|
Out of the house that holds a town
|
In the continent of a fossil
|
One by one in dust and shawl,
|
Dry as echoes and insect-faced,
|
His fathers cling to the hand of the girl
|
And the dead hand leads the past,
|
Leads them as children and as air
|
On to the blindly tossing tops;
|
The centuries throw back their hair
|
And the old men sing from newborn lips:
|
Time is bearing another son.
|
Kill Time! |
She turns in her pain!
|
The oak is felled in the acorn
|
And the hawk in the egg kills the wren.
|
He who blew the great fire in
|
And died on a hiss of flames
|
Or walked the earth in the evening
|
Counting the denials of the grains
|
Clings to her drifting hair, and climbs;
|
And he who taught their lips to sing
|
Weeps like the risen sun among
|
The liquid choirs of his tribes.
|
The rod bends low, divining land,
|
And through the sundered water crawls
|
A garden holding to her hand
|
With birds and animals
|
With men and women and waterfalls
|
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships |
And stunned and still on the green, laid veil
|
Sand with legends in it’s virgin laps
|
And prophets loud on the burned dunes;
|
Insects and valleys hold her thighs hard,
|
Times and places grip her breast bone,
|
She is breaking with seasons and clouds;
|
Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves,
|
With moving fish and rounded stones
|
Up and down the greater waves
|
A separate river breathes and runs;
|
Strike and sing his catch of fields
|
For the surge is sown with barley,
|
The cattle graze on the covered foam,
|
The hills have footed the waves away,
|
With wild sea fillies and soaking bridles
|
With salty colts and gales in their limbs
|
All the horses of his haul of miracles
|
Gallop through the arched, green farms,
|
Trot and gallop with gulls upon them
|
And thunderbolts in their manes.
|
O Rome and Sodom To-morrow and London
|
The country tide is cobbled with towns
|
And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder
|
And the streets that the fisherman combed
|
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
|
And his loin was a hunting flame |
Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair
|
And terribly lead him home alive
|
Lead her prodigal home to his terror,
|
The furious ox-killing house of love.
|
Down, down, down, under the ground,
|
Under the floating villages,
|
Turns the moon-chained and water-wound
|
Metropolis of fishes,
|
There is nothing left of the sea but it’s sound,
|
Under the earth the loud sea walks,
|
In deathbeds of orchards the boat dies down
|
And the bait is drowned among hayricks,
|
Land, land, land, nothing remains
|
Of the pacing, famous sea but it’s speech,
|
And into it’s talkative seven tombs
|
The anchor dives through the floors of a church.
|
Good-bye, good luck, struck the sun and the moon,
|
To the fisherman lost on the land.
|
He stands alone in the door of his home,
|
With his long-legged heart in his hand. |