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Enkomputiligis Don HARLOW |
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I claim you, mortals, by your salty veins, By the ceaseless tides that rule your dreams ... There is no flood of joy or pain that has Not long surged in my soundless depths. There is no human dream that sings itself In any key that has not bloomed and died A million years in my moon-caught leaves. You teach, o haughty mortals, that your forebears Struggled out from the ancient sea, Yet you yourselves have never left my ways. You carry ocean in you as you strive, And where you wander, there is no more dry land. In you, I conquer the deserts and the heights That often I invaded to the peaks And will again ... and will, and will again. You are captives of the sea forever, My unconscious scouts upon the land, You dare to call yourselves earthly creatures, Yet at night you always drift back to me. You dream of sleepy gentle rocking tides, Of furious wind-borne storms that, hurl their spray Of black jagged rocks that yield at last ... Of deep sea-green refuge beneath the clash, Where not even the sea's own rage can touch The eternal soul that murmurs in its depths. You dream of flying, soaring without wings, As the dolphin and the whale dance, Your cousins who forsook the thirsty struggle, Returning to their womb, mother of all. Did you think earth could be your mother? Foolish dream, that parched barrenness Sornehow first gave life to dust and wind. Little ones, exiled from your home, You fear me now, for you have grown so warped, 5o estranged from your own first kind, You cannot live in me, as is right. Yet you are drawn to me, crippled dwarfs; You cluster at my gentler edges, longing, And you know -- your secret fear and hope -- You know that in the end you are mine. |