You are quite correct Carol. Stupid title. Burial at Sea is the proper
title.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Carol Sircoulomb" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 3:38 AM
Subject: Re: Hyperpoem: another contribution.
> Arthur this is very nice I feel it should have another Title. I got the
> feeling he was dead before being set out to sea so he did not drown, or I
am
> missing something in the poem .Did they put him overboard because of
disease
> if so maybe you could describe the feelings of drowning before going on to
> the descriptions.
> Carol s
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Arthur" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 1:47 AM
> Subject: Hyperpoem: another contribution.
>
>
> > 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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