This is the death by water, this is dying
Bloat and fishbelly white a thing that slips
And slobbers on the groundswell. Denying
This to survival is the final lying
Before witnesses. This is the end of men and ships.
To die and turn to earth, to rot in ground,
Is strait and comely. Slack on the tide’s withdrawing
Plumped naked offal stinks along the wind
When the rolled wash shudders, facing down
Where aeons in the coral eke their slender growing.
I lobbed my hate in tracers at a pip-
This I have hated, say, This I yearned dead-
Muster that all out with a discharge chit
And make an end. Peace is the end of it,
A burnt out tracer uninimical and dud.
When do the drowned break surface? Nine days, ten
Before that white slob is a dead marine?
Question the civil proctors who convene
A parchment anger. This thing turns again
For good to sound the coral at the hearts of men.
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