Great Abaco

THREE POEMS

GREAT ABACO

Now earth dissolves beyond the flying fish,

A bruise of spray abusing all hulls,

And stiff-curled surf upbraids the simple wish

With Caribbean answer: while a wall

Of mist holds off the land the senses fall

Through the limp canyons of the twisting gulls,

Man out of sight of land forgets the land

And splintered symbols of his unbelief

Rise from the summer water, and extend

Instinctive arcs in air, then dive again

To a numb silence, and are caught within

Both air and water in their foolish grief.

No Rheingold here: locate the mystery

And fear begins, a hot wind off the cays

Shriveling soul into its city shape;

You by the mast there, turn your eyes away

To the last star that still denies the day

Rather than sear me with your history.

Let us, while sunlight grows, forget that Death

Is more than subways, or a steel bouquet

Screwed to the tortured breast of every bride

Who ever wakened in a cinema dawn

To take off fact and put a legend on:

Let us, bound outward into glittering day

Keep the heart cool for truth, and undismayed

By any passion more intense than this

Loose blinding spray; the animal has gone

Into the rainbow; now his memory goes

Routed by sunlight, which incorrigibly knows

The drift of love, impoverished reminisce.

I loved you in the cities, my desire

Towering like a skyscraper through the smoke

Of thought; beneath your voice my spirit moved

Down the shamed labyrinths of incredible stone

Until (your hands on my face like clouds) alone

The stunned heart stumbled, and the passion broke.

So of this voyage utterly to tell

The central radiance where we stand or fall

Let us look eastward through the mist, and drive

Anyway fiercely at the bloody reef:

Else we lie smothered by our small belief,

Or, like the birds, have faith in nothing at all.