A Blue Day

Under the heave of a far-off storm

the ship recollects its danger, rolls

off course and is brought back.

One of the empty guns trained out

for practice stammers: it chills me,

how it stumbles over its gears.

Though the control is too subtle for metal,

why do I mind this, and the swell?

The sea is as vacant as the guns,

And the sky is so vast, who can say

what plane's passed over, whose sound

is so thin and dying.

1 will think of these quiet days, but now

am partly deceived by their

surface. So far as 1 know

nothing goes under the keel, the rake

of the mast describes its mils

through heaven to me alone.