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Fog
The fog fell early this evening
– the lightship lost –
and you came out of the blue
in the wheelhouse to see me.
Your white dress is drenched;
I plait your hair into ropes.
Down Port Pegasus way
it always rains this time of year.
The fireman is eyeing us,
both his feet in the anchor chains.
Never look at topmasts when
storms are raging; youʼll get dizzy.
The bosun curses the weather,
and Tocopilla lies below the horizon.
Better periscopes and torpedoes
than to wait and be in a funk.
Go! Your place is on dry land.
You came to see me and saw me not;
from midnight on Iʼve been drowned
a thousand miles off the Hebrides.
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*
Argosy
Captain Jimmyʼs pirate ship,
on which you too will soon embark,
is laden with hash and coke
and has a light astern.
Itʼs months now since we set sail,
and with the weatherʼs blessing
by the time we reach Peru
all our cargo will end up in smoke.
We sail on seas full of
strange marine vegetation,
an aged sun stares down at us
and now and then gives us a wink.
The hatches are empty, dark.
How have thousands of tons disappeared?
In Chile empty pipes
and customs officials await our arrival.
Polaris has been forgotten,
the anchors have been lost at sea.
On rope ladders row on row
dangle twelve Sirens.
The Gorgon on the bow one night
jumped overboard, half-seas over,
and by her side glided to escort her
five of Columbusʼ lecherous crew.
Then weʼll be washed up by the angry waves
on the shoals of Akora,
monsters painted a deep purple
with gullsʼ wings on our heads.
`
*
Mal du Depart
Iʼll always be an ideal and feckless lover
of distant voyages and blue oceans,
and I shall die on a night like all other nights
without penetrating the horizonʼs hazy line.
Proudly as always ships will weigh anchor
for Madras, Singapore, Algiers and Sfax,
while Iʼll be bent over Admiralty charts in some office
or adding up sums in thick ledgers.
Iʼll stop talking of voyages afar;
my friends will think Iʼve forgotten all about them,
and my mother, overjoyed, will tell whoever asks:
“It was a youthful whim, but now itʼs past…”
Then one night my own self shall stand before me,
and like a sullen judge ask me to give causes
until this incompetent, trembling hand of mine
shall take aim fearlessly and shoot the offender.
And I, who always wished to be buried one day
in some deep sea in the far-off Indies,
shall have a very ordinary, miserable death,
and a funeral like that of all the others.
