More than once we hear him address the sea;
the rage for order, as Stevens says, is blessed,
and even our dreams, as they wind across the width
of the ocean, soundlessly, have taken shape,
have reconstructed the day to resemble the sea,
the quiet boats, the night which has suffused
the spaces between the lights with zones of dark,
the rolling dusk, the shards of living shadow
absorbing the night, enchanting the careless passage
through which we tumble, portal of ghostly stars
where that which we have captured we must grasp
and hold it up against what has become
an idea engendered by the pen we hold,
a simple weaving of what we have imagined
with what we take for truth. We bring them both
together in our way, and seal them there
within the illusion that we have created order.
And when the demarcations of our musings
begin to feel like a single thing we are
inspired to deconstruct and make again
that thought which we, at first, could not call ours,
that empty, breathless chaos we’ll try to arrange
against the water that wears away the stones.