(in memoriam John Masefield, 1878-1967)
I
A whitecap traced the undertow
with dancing kilted ‘A’,
the dotted zenith caped in foam,
then sheared, illiterate, away.
The flag skipped at the mast-top,
the dragon neat and sissy-new,
gold on blue, a field so blue
that sky on ocean seemed to drop.
Fitted out carbuncular, the mass
hulled strict above the chopping sea,
light made mad in the Belfast glass,
the shavings smoked and falling free.
Cheeseclothed to a slender shroud
the figurehead looked a ghostly girl,
a design of roseberry, curve and curl,
the armored forehead doomed and proud.
A belch of bubbles wide as a net
cradling silver from the keel,
the bind’s last braid yanked set
and tight, an archer leaning on his heel.
Clear the draw with a barrel
roll, planks echoing to piers’ end,
with the nervous brace made narrow
to escape what trash the tide might send.
The tightening eye at the lightening
hand, rope-burn like a fiddle-
squeak, a whittler’s blade brightening
like a snake down the yew’s fat middle.
A whistle from the portside seat
sang a boast to the loose-swung pegging,
docks crawled with the yellow cheat
of last-minute loves left begging.
The roaring surge, the hushing swell,
the gripe of winch, the cannoned shout
of canvas taut and bellied out,
the dulling of the harbor bell.
The close-set ships waddled and bumped
till the harbor waters roughed up,
and like to Lola Montes and her cup
only the lookout dared the jump.
But out and away where far is near
and the past of beyond is today,
a single ship slips swift and clear
the surface blue, the depths of gray.
II
The ocean is sea,
surrounded by sea,
and land is a dream mislaid,
where the winds lie down
and the stalled clouds pause,
uncomplaining and delayed.
‘O happy few’
neither few nor glad,
no mystic brotherhood of brine,
some drunk, some sick,
some pure and proper,
a regular Daumier in dizzy line.
The weather is
fine for sailing
and triple-fine to banish Prospero.
Light like a trumpet’s
piercing note
that falls on stay and soars on go.
Anecdote has a last
name, has he?
Stuffed with the drippings of Pig and Pipe,
the hollowed-out
promise of return
to love’s latest socket, moist and ripe.
Land and land-love
grasp like mist,
grip as powerless as unsettled shade,
but soon the harbor
is a dot,
the city shies down, the towers fade.
As Marlowe loved Raleigh,
past all reason.
The smooth Virginia, the Negro’s Head
which, puffed in
breeze and salt,
choked never and ever friendship bred.
Tobacco and rum
and unquotable song,
apox and alert with bugger and frigging,
of the widow and
her merry loves,
of white slaves a-dangle in a Sultan’s rigging.
Ottomans up,
Venetians down,
drum and horn and alabaster.
Once was a time
that turned around,
Christians entombed in Turkish plaster.
A hundred stories,
a single crew,
a hundred tales of sleep and danger,
Death riding stirruped
with moonlit surf,
and every brother turned sudden stranger.
So pitch a tent
on the Middle Sea,
where horizon is a place called tomorrow.
Table-flat sea,
as calm as the dead
who’ve sailed these leagues without quarrel.