Islands

We stood and wavered on the deck and gazed
half-heartedly into the chopping ocean.
Our girl, she drove through wild water, split
hills of brine, as brazen as a harlot;

No thin black line appeared on the horizon;
no wisp of turf to salve the stinging eyes
of men too long uncontinented,
lurching drunk on salted planks, wave-tossed.

A saturated and demented rabble,
we cup our ears for Sirens. We are lost.

*

The queenly moon lurked in cloud,
patient as the sun descended;
bottles broke, and Bacchus slipped
to steal a puking swab.

Disquised in that pale raiment
he reveled from stem to stern.
The sails bellied,
the ship lurched onward.

Where are the gulls
that shrieked
like banshees to remind us
of lands we left behind us?

*

Some of us leapt into the bitch below us
and welcomed oblivion in her wet embrace;
some of us met the Devil in a knife-edge
below-decks, and expired upon a curse.

*

This prayer we humbly whisper
at the altar of the wheel,

in solemn incantation,
with a tremor of the eyelids,

beneath our ragged banners
before a rising storm,

fingers at the triggers
of our plundered arms:


Sweet Christ, King of sea-walkers,
Tamer of winds, O make the waters smooth,
Wine-maker, Alchemist of Heaven,
Cloud-splitter, Immanuel,
Be with us in the unbroken waves before us,
Be with us in the froth and foam of our wake;

O Conqueror of the ancient ones,
the ghosts of Rome and Athens,
Your heel will abate the will of the Titan,
the maker of storms;
Your heel on the neck of the giant
will temper the wrath
that haunts the dreams of the mermen.

*

Well may You judge us, should we walk again
upon a ground that stays fixed to our heels;
well may You judge, and save a little blessing,
Mighty Jehovah, who wrought the mercy of islands.