by James Lawrence

All at Sea

Night is at its nadir and the moon-scythe’s light
Gets mocked to dizziness in the drunken sea;
The tomb of fish-shoals spittles up its spite,
And glimmering squid-hordes dream and breed in me.

Hail has hammered me in my open cot,
And freezing ice-floes fettered me to standstill;
And the sink of rivers, swelling as it rots,
Spreads out more wave-halls long before my land-sill.

Still I’ll not despire to no mermaid’s rock;
I plot one hundred paths to my beloved;
But her liquid heart sits hard behind its lock;
I pitch, and toss, one hundred tries rebuffèd.

The sun-brand swelters, and the salt-sick main
Mists up, distills this whispering refrain.