The Drowned

What pillows of red coral hold their heads,

Those lolling heads long fallen from the light,

The whale, pontifical,

And the shark surfeit know.

What ghosts of women walk a thousand piers,

Their longing borne abroad by all the Trades,

The circling gull can sense,

And the sad albatross;

And love and spices mingle on those beds

Where all embraces are but currents cast

About by some dim surge

And shifting of the sea.

In fo'c'sles far below the urge of bells,

These keep the peace of pale disjunctive bones,

Who kept their sheep of days

And wolf of death apart,

Until the fold burst with a noise of clouds

And let the wolf and furious water feed,

And the planked foredeck felt

The last long slide arrive.

The lobster's sunless pasturage, the quick

Crab's littered bower has these shepherds now;

Their faint pipes submarine

Come with the groaner in.

O defiladed creatures of the Deep,

Sleek altars for this sacrifice of flesh,

You gain no triumph by

Your dark indifferent feasts.

Who wakes at dawn on his terrestrial bed

And sees the stars drown in the mounting day

Is by his element,

Brown earth, betrayed as well;

And deep as roots of elm goes someday down,

Couched, too, and pillowed, and in pale repose,

To glow in that cold house

Where other coral grows.