From the Archives...
Passages II: A Poet is Born
Your loss was foretold
in empty vessels such as these
hulls vacant and hungry
and long since moored in silence, unbelieved
How long have I lost you
to dockyards of your screaming,
genius fits of a wisdom epileptic?
In sacrilege I held you hated, searching for the man you shed like skin,
fearing for your breath in vain—your words had already stolen your right
to die
In some forgettable night you left this soil
as men dying in their sick dreamed still
of waters deep and blue they had never seen,
while the horizon, unknowing, waited for you
to list from Time’s mortal shoring
—that brittle horizon to men—
leaving me the lone birthmark
of this still earth.