The Voyage
Is becomes ought, becomes is again
Doubly strong
All knotted time goes
Blood sprouts from brows
Eyes comb the low ground
Aged men recede to attics
Boys to their basements, until the time to climb
Are there yet no raybeams?
Do the mighty cosmos not penetrate
Your paper-thin veil?
It’s not down there, I promise you
That’s why island must swim
And ocean must take to sail
Your ancestral vessel lays ready
Dash its dry cobwebs
Varnish the old honeyed wood
Cake your storepots in the noonday sun
At night dream of the break
Mad-eyes and heavenly torrents
At the very edge of things
Where the black dragons storm
Then plunge your ship’s sharp bow
Straight through the Leviathan ventricle
Dance to its blood and the moonlight
She is your only friend, the Moon
No fathers in this venture boy
Nothing but walls and blood
When you see that formless golden spec
Where landfall beckons and sands collect
Then thank your rain-hardened hull
And at the crucial time, burn ship on shore
Slash deep into jungle
Cut through friend, foe, flesh all
Lest you become ensalted too
Scissor cloths for bandages
Slice the ancient tapestries
Drop your pack at the mouth of the valley
Scatter seed at the cavern’s base
Fight into mother earth’s wide maw
To the very heart of silence
And through that too, if it can be cut
