[FOR WARREN WINSLOW, DEAD AT SEA]

Let man have dominion over the fishes of the sea and the fowls of the air and the beasts of the whole earth, and every creeping creature that moveth upon the earth.

I







A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket—



The sea was still breaking violently and night



Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,



When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light



Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,



He grappled at the net



With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs:



The corpse was bloodless, a botch of reds and whites,



Its open, staring eyes



Were lustreless dead-lights



Or cabin-windows on a stranded hulk



Heavy with sand. We weight the body, close



Its eyes and heave it seaward whence it came,



Where the heel-headed dogfish barks its nose



On Ahab’s void and forehead; and the name



Is blocked in yellow chalk.



Sailors, who pitch this portent at the sea



Where dreadnaughts shall confess



Its hell-bent deity,



When you are powerless



To sand-bag this Atlantic bulwark, faced



By the earth-shaker, green, unwearied, chaste



In his steel scales: ask for no Orphean lute



To pluck life back. The guns of the steeled fleet



Recoil and then repeat



The hoarse salute.











II







Whenever winds are moving and their breath



Heaves at the roped-in bulwarks of this pier,



The terns and sea-gulls tremble at your death



In these home waters. Sailor, can you hear



The Pequod’s sea wings, beating landward, fall



Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall



Off ’Sconset, where the yawing S-boats splash



The bellbuoy, with ballooning spinnakers,



As the entangled, screeching mainsheet clears



The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash



The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids



For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids



Seaward. The winds’ wings beat upon the stones,



Cousin, and scream for you and the claws rush



At the sea’s throat and wring it in the slush



Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones



Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast



Bobbing by Ahab’s whaleboats in the East.











III







All you recovered from Poseidon died



With you, my cousin, and the harrowed brine



Is fruitless on the blue beard of the god,



Stretching beyond us to the castles in Spain,



Nantucket’s westward haven. To Cape Cod



Guns, cradled on the tide,



Blast the eelgrass about a waterclock



Of bilge and backwash, roil the salt and sand



Lashing earth’s scaffold, rock



Our warships in the hand



Of the great God, where time’s contrition blues



Whatever it was these Quaker sailors lost



In the mad scramble of their lives. They died



When time was open-eyed,



Wooden and childish; only bones abide



There, in the nowhere, where their boats were tossed



Sky-high, where mariners had fabled news



Of IS, the whited monster. What it cost



Them is their secret. In the sperm-whale’s slick



I see the Quakers drown and hear their cry:



“If God himself had not been on our side,



If God himself had not been on our side,



When the Atlantic rose against us, why,



Then it had swallowed us up quick.”











IV







This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale



Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell



And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools



To send the Pequod packing off to hell:



This is the end of them, three-quarters fools,



Snatching at straws to sail



Seaward and seaward on the turntail whale,



Spouting out blood and water as it rolls,



Sick as a dog to these Atlantic shoals:



Clamavimus, O depths. Let the sea-gulls wail







For water, for the deep where the high tide



Mutters to its hurt self, mutters and ebbs.



Waves wallow in their wash, go out and out,



Leave only the death-rattle of the crabs,



The beach increasing, its enormous snout



Sucking the ocean’s side.



This is the end of running on the waves;



We are poured out like water. Who will dance



The mast-lashed master of Leviathans



Up from this field of Quakers in their unstoned graves?











V







When the whale’s viscera go and the roll



Of its corruption overruns this world



Beyond tree-swept Nantucket and Woods Hole



And Martha’s Vineyard, Sailor, will your sword



Whistle and fall and sink into the fat?



In the great ash-pit of Jehoshaphat



The bones cry for the blood of the white whale,



The fat flukes arch and whack about its ears,



The death-lance churns into the sanctuary, tears



The gun-blue swingle, heaving like a flail,



And hacks the coiling life out: it works and drags



And rips the sperm-whale’s midriff into rags,



Gobbets of blubber spill to wind and weather,



Sailor, and gulls go round the stoven timbers



Where the morning stars sing out together



And thunder shakes the white surf and dismembers



The red flag hammered in the mast-head. Hide



Our steel, Jonas Messias, in Thy side.











VI







OUR LADY OF WALSINGHAM







There once the penitents took off their shoes



And then walked barefoot the remaining mile;



And the small trees, a stream and hedgerows file



Slowly along the munching English lane,



Like cows to the old shrine, until you lose



Track of your dragging pain.



The stream flows down under the druid tree,



Shiloah’s whirlpools gurgle and make glad



The castle of God. Sailor, you were glad



And whistled Sion by that stream. But see:







Our Lady, too small for her canopy,



Sits near the altar. There’s no comeliness



At all or charm in that expressionless



Face with its heavy eyelids. As before,



This face, for centuries a memory,



Non est species, neque decor,



Expressionless, expresses God: it goes



Past castled Sion. She knows what God knows,



Not Calvary’s Cross nor crib at Bethlehem



Now, and the world shall come to Walsingham.











VII







The empty winds are creaking and the oak



Splatters and splatters on the cenotaph,



The boughs are trembling and a gaff



Bobs on the untimely stroke



Of the greased wash exploding on a shoal-bell



In the old mouth of the Atlantic. It’s well;



Atlantic, you are fouled with the blue sailors,



Sea-monsters, upward angel, downward fish:



Unmarried and corroding, spare of flesh



Mart once of supercilious, wing’d clippers,



Atlantic, where your bell-trap guts its spoil



You could cut the brackish winds with a knife



Here in Nantucket, and cast up the time



When the Lord God formed man from the sea’s slime



And breathed into his face the breath of life,



And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill.



The Lord survives the rainbow of His will.

