We made the shape in bowsprits Dovetailed, bolted tight Scrimmed and windlassed in the ink Of all our oceanly delights Fifty-six ells long, and the upright Measured twice, a golden mean Embedded in the earth To a sepulchre’s joist This world and the next In right-angled tandem Justice uttered on our lips Harpooned the beast With that pneumatic fleeing snake Watched it vomit up Ambergris like sacrament I think perhaps, the drowned preserved within Found at last release Drew it up in hawsers Netted in those snarling knots That shrink until the rope begins to cut Block and tackle an ugly face Double tongued, the bronze Gone to the verdigris Of brute seas In the ichor deep I am not sure If the heart Or time slows As the weight Of slumping water Only that The swelling aortic arch Is a bell Where the silence Of the god echoes Under the excruciating beat Of a slow approaching hammer Pierced the pale side For a crown, a strangler’s kelp The gulls in swooped laments We will eat this lord alive Rendered fat in slick fat slabs from jigsawed hide That stinking lard To light the blue-green evening With a flame’s slight harem dance Caught in the Salome writhe Of Antipas’s demand To keep the god at bay Watched the monster Burning bright For three days and three nights All came to see, and revel In his Vitas revelries After, almost completely gone Charred vines of rope Hung from the spars Still half asleep The waves in serry knelt A king tide about the crucifix The rigs of carnival drowned or gone I ash blind Augured, anvilled, awled On the creature’s back A sun-gilt morning road To another sea
