That Which Cannot Be Fixed
I.
Once more he turned to that which could not be fixed.
By the sea, insolid rock, stentor, and said:
Lascar, is there a body, turbulent
With time, in wavering water lies, swollen
With thought, through which it cannot see? Does it
Lie lengthwise like the cloud of sleep, not quite
Reposed? And does it have a puissant heart
To toll its pulses, vigors of its self?
Lascar, and water-carcass never-named,
These vigors make, thrice-triple-syllabled,
The difficult images of possible shapes,
That cannot now be fixed. Only there is
A beating and a beating in the centre of
The sea, a strength that tumbles everywhere,
Like more and more becoming less and less,
Like space dividing its blue and by division
Being changed from space to the sailor’s metier,
Or say from that which was conceived to that
Which was realized, like reason’s constant ruin.
Sleep deep, good eel, in your perverse marine.
II.
The human ocean beats against this rock
Of earth, rises against it, tide by tide,
Continually. And old John Zeller stands
On his hill, watching the rising and falling, and says:
Of what are these the creatures, what element
Or—yes: what elements, unreconciled
Because there is no golden solvent here?
If they were creatures of the sea alone,
But singular, they would, like water, scale
The uptopping top and tip of things, borne up
By the cadaver of these caverns, half-asleep.
But if they are of sea, earth, sky—water
And fire and air and things not discomposed
From ignorance, not an undivided whole,
It is an ocean of watery images
And shapes of fire, and wind that bears them down.
Perhaps these forms are seeking to escape
Cadaverous undulations. Rest, old mould …