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CvK |
Watermarks |
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III. Haven |
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Nor alone in
keel’s slash and sea-cleft it sheers a course
from haven to wine-galled shores where we
heave the murmur of skins to lips long blown
blood-dry from prayer to have our hopes
drummed, basted by water that cuts at
breath and muscle zeal. And on in bolt of
surf to stern, light still on the
laughing sea, though meniscus filled, and the
cargo slips beneath the deck, the haul of it a
hum across the staves, that lifts our
tongues to word and ring of it as a shout in
cauldron. Our bodies are bared to the burst of
wave and the stun of surge about our bows
foundering as private echoes demand to be
named; and we cleave side of rock and saliva slots
in saying: a third is risen among our company,
dreaded as they that dwell therein, and more
moves with light on prow-whet dorsal
curve in the swell, then swirls back
from sheen to gaping white gulp of sea-love
and the sour of it all, then flows away
and flickers on its crests. The wise within
join breast to breast and breath tides
from mouth to mouth as the wake turns
below us in a diagonal drive up and forward to
the teeth-bared sea. Too long in light
of the storm sails veer to the roadsteads
broken open to the wind that calls us to
return and come home. But up on sigh of
shale, over shoals we cast the wares
in scales that will not tip. There we sat down
and wept, cleaving tongues would not forget
thee and the waters where points of light
bob on throat-eased deep. Should not memory
grow among these bitter herbs,
pushing against the gush of salt-lipped
wash? There with them too: Our arms whose
cunning ebbs with the wait along the
rush-smudged littorals while we cache the cargo
and attend the weight of night above the
shingle and sing hymns to the wind about
our empty rigging. And there hidden
in the vent of bluffs it persists and
daily fissures spread in rock and our
breath is measured by its beat against
the cliffs. And with you then we sailed to find
a home, build cities and kill unnamed
fear as in water-caves. Here with the
lamina, our necessity; and there in shoreline caverns
the cargo waits beneath charnel,
bound by the bell of surge and
become a fish-ferned ossuary of gulls. |