To a Grounded Sailor
What shores, or whores, cerulean-eyed, White-sanded, white-limbed, peppered With pines and shady spots to nap Away the randy noon, have you visited?
How many babes or dreams, water•bam, Water-logged, have been drowned and lost In seasonal or summery commerce Between palmy islands and sandy coves!
How often did you find the North-West passage To the still, hoary Pole, where all is silence, Or the warm currents towards Hesperides Of golden apples and scented leaves? How often did you drift into the great well
Of sleep with crowns of red berries Round your head and your sea-shell ears Ringing with the cooing of doves and sirens' choirs?
Ah, there was the life for the sea-legged sailor!, But now your woolly knees can only wobble And fold under the somersaults of the long ribs, And you lie hump-backed in a wistful
Corner gazing at the mane of the shiny sea.
Now the mast is stowed away into a shed, The sails folded, the engines dispersed in the wind, The fair-limbed boat a hump of boards, Sun-stained, sun-bleached, dream-drowned, A shell echoing the roar of the receding ocean !
JOSEPH CHIARI
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