Marine

Reefward by sea light, up from fathoms down,

Was not the way, was not the way I came

Or go; not where the yellow divers drown

In pearlbeds will these eyes be found; no frame

Of coral, nothing of the sea is here:

Only a dust, a dust of bone, a land

Of red oases boiling in the air,

The dropping of a dry, a sudden sand.

And yet this is not true. For I have seen

Them whirl and hurl me out upon a chart

Of atoms; all day long I've lain between

My unimagined cells and heard my heart

Crying marine, marine, amazed to be

In water, all that water, all that sea.