At night I know the sea, riddled with boats,
Trusts the sand to stay beneath, the fish
To float into the mouths of bigger fish. Not fathoming its depth
Or edge, the particles of glass, clean bones
Caught up in water always foaming,
Crawling, turning shells to stone,
Holding lightly all the peopled boats
Cradled in the black cold,
Or drowning.
The sea trusts, as I trust that you,
Within my thoughts, are safe, though far,
And floating, or alone observing mobs of orange fish
Disordering the sea
In the deep part light won’t dive. The fate of swimmers,
The invisible salt, the inconstant colors
Waves inherit from the sky’s reservoir of blues
Are none of them the ocean’s province.
Like a great love it only loves,
Pours itself back in itself, not shifting
The sleeping line of the horizon.
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this is extraordinary--
ReplyDeleteI love the broken clauses that create cool half-meanings, like:
At night I know the sea, riddled with boats...
and I love:
the fish / to float into the mouths of bigger fish
The only thing I have to say about this is that I wanted more of a return to the "you" mentioned in the middle--something about "Like a great love it only loves" doesn't ring with me, but it sounds like it should?--but I think this whole poem is working on many levels that I need to read through more.
I am so in love with this poem. Nina and I were talking about how wonderful its dreamy quality leaves us feeling while also remaining so grounded. The first half of the poem, in my mind, is especially strong as "I know the sea...trusts" leads us into a wonderful long sentence of broken clauses (as Eric notes) that reminds us of the many magical sea stuffs we trust to happen all the time - and apparently the narrator knows the sea does too!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Eric's comment that this magic gets a little muddled near the end - mostly because the badass turn you create by bringing in the lover gets lost for me near the end, I think mostly with the language. Otherwise, I think this is absolutely wonderful!
this reminds me of whitman's out of the cradle endlessly rocking, how the beginning piled on phrase after phrase and by doing so suddenly you felt the ebb and flow of the water.
ReplyDeletekeep splitting this with commas, even if it's not grammatical. i liked the disjointedness of the ending, but i want it More disjointed, more wave-like. i love how nonlinear this is, and that sometimes a thought doesnt actually get understood in a coherent way but in the same way that one gets a bunch of puzzle pieces dropped on them and tries to guess at the picture.
"inconstant" doesnt seem to fit. and the last three lines i think need another image.
so effective the hourglass: broad to the specific "you" moment and back to the horizon. i see three structural points: first two lines, second person in the middle, and last three lines. joined by waves of imagery in between. in between there is space, color, movement, transformation, texture... but the last three lines are my favorite b/c of how we have arrived there.
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