Poetry Is Not A Luxury.
Jenny Joseph
Out of Sight of Land
It is the star above us makes us see
The distance of the firmament, immensity
Of the green wave that swells beneath the dark.
Who, watching the dappling early sunlight take
The shadow of the birds across the snow
Into the banks and bushes where they go,
And seeing the children on the varied land
Could hear and understand the drowning cry:
“Love, do not turn or I shall sink and die.
“Keep fixed your straight beam and I shall not see
The dark gulf of the wave’s immensity.
Remove your holding light—I fall and drown?”
But the ageless night will send no grey dove down
In token on these waters: a ship to move
To a horizon, headlands, shores, a cove
Are part of the necessity of love.
Who hangs alone upon the seabird’s cry
And light from a dead star, gets no reply.
And to the desperate eyes all that is given
Is to sense the white bird passing, through an empty heaven
The slow star turning, in the green wave drowned.
