Blood and Water

Water is a fluid fever, a flux and a questing.

Water is a world's protean fret distilled

To a wrinkle of brown, to a curl of silver twisting

Always down to a sea that is never filled.

Water and air and fire are the triune ferment

Of earth; but breath may be quieted; embers cool.

It is only water that knows no end of torment

In rain or river, ocean or cloud or pool.

Surely the sorriest trick of the gods' prevision

Was modeling man of this Ishmael element,

So that his blood is a flux and a long confusion,

So neither body nor brain may attain content.

For his veins are vexed with the tug of uneasy rivers,

Hunting for haven a sea no man may know.

The quarreling tides of a hundred oblique endeavors

Harry his heart till the frail flesh melts like snow.

His life is a flux and a questing, a fluid fever;

His ways are the ways of water. And at what price

Can he purchase peace till all fever and flux are over,

And the last tide hushed in the peace of the glacial ice?