The Drowned Man
Withered with fever, west of Cyprus, I died
one night as the moon rose like a quinquereme
breasting the world's rim, night birds cried
in the singing trees and the south wind sighed
like a whore, rich with the spice-thick perfumes of our dreams.
They shot me from a polished plank to slide
into the long slow bulges of the swollen deep
down through the rippling gloom to glide
down where glum-weeded shadows hide
me, snug as an oyster in my canvas sleeve, to sleep.
A century, a century, a century have gone.
I hung nudged by long shapes and ragged maws
till I and the guzzling sulk-mouthed fish were one
till I and the marlin, crab and rotting gull, in confusion,
broke in boiling rollers along other shores.
I have heard the mermaids singing each to each;
streamed from the dolphin's muscled flank;
slopped on the wracked and cockled beach;
listened to the sea mews bicker in a brackish reach;
seen the clipper heel beyond the bell-buoyed bank.
I am the whale path and their fluted song.
I am the gleam of oil-slicked waters in a Northern dock.
I am the stinging salt-lash in the gale-flung
slap of sloggered brine and the tide-long
spuming over broken rock.
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