Well now, these mariners-sailors, captains, All in their great Ocean swallowed forever . . . Who left nonchalant for their faraway journeys, Are dead-as true as they left. What then! It's their trade; they died with their boots on! Their snifters to their hearts, all alive inside their capotes . . . -@3Dead@1 . . . No thanks: Lady Death has no sea legs; Let her sleep with you: She's your good wife . . . -As for them, none of it: Complete! washed away by the wave! Or lost in a squall . . . A squall . . . that's death, you think? The lower sail Pounding across the water! -That's @3floundering@1 . . . A blast of the leaden sea, then the high mast Whipping at wave level-and that's @3foundering@1. -Foundering. -Fathom this word. Your @3death@1 is mighty pale And nothing much on board, in a raging gale . . . Nothing much against the great bitter smile Of the sailor struggling. -Come now, make way! - Death the windy old phantom changes face: The Sea! . . . Drowned? -Aw, go on! You drown in @3fresh@1 water! -Sunk! Crew and cargo! And, down to the little ship's-boy, Defiance in their eyes, in their teeth curses! Spitting a death-rattle quid to the spume, And downing without puking @3the big salty cup@1 . . . -The way they downed their snifters- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . -No six-foot-under for them, or cemetery rats: Them, they head for the sharks! The soul of a sailor, Instead of oozing in your potatoes, Breathes with every wave! -See there on the horizon the billow heaving; The amorous belly, you'd say, Of a whore in heat, half-soused . . . They're there! -The billow has a cave- -Listen, listen to the storm bellow! . . . Their anniversary. -It returns quite often- O poet, keep your blindman's songs to yourself; -For them: the @3De Profundis@1 the wind trumpets! . . . Let them roll eternally in the virgin spaces! . . . Let them roll green and bare, Without pine and without nails, without lid, without candles . . . -O let them roll, parvenu landlubbers! | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE LIFE SO SHORT by EAMON GRENNAN A ROUGH RHYME ON A ROUGH MATTER; THE ENGLISH GAME LAWS by CHARLES KINGSLEY THE DRUM by JOHN SCOTT (1730-1783) COME UP FROM THE FIELDS FATHER by WALT WHITMAN AN ARAB WELCOME by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH THE LEGEND OF ARA-COELI by THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH |