The ships are painted red above the waterline.
And below, a blond nothingness attractive to barnacles,
carved to a rich dumb-show of whorls, grooves, and
crescents, dream signs to lantern home the drowned.
The ship’s scientist brings his collection of jarred bugs
up on deck during the day, to sketch them and
annotate their inebriated cripple and creep,
wings opening hopeless to the glass-imprisoned sun.
A drop of water, a magnolia leaf to sup on.
The scientist sips his ration of rum, dandifies the
margins of his portraits, lists and arranges his charges
to pass the time, to make himself the quietest character
in a flotilla which flies the flag of a cold, unconquered country.