Tracking

For Carolyn Creedon

Yes, Carolyn, the ocean has its depths, its mezzanine,
the place between the blue, the green and those black waters
where the submarines feel their way by sound, the ear

the only guide when the lights grow dim, the place where
dawn has never reached, and there the giant Alba swims, ellipsis
of the deep, enormity, unseen, except on the sonar”s

screen, bright shadow of leviathan or a merlin trick, for
at sụch a depth, such crushing pressures — it could not
live —and yet. The transitive exists, swimming the fssures,

like a recurring dream or a condor skimming the peaks,
as if Peru had been transposed below, or some great cỉty sunk
and in its long, unlighted streets, fnned giants slid along

the canyons ofdrowned tenements, and went their migrant way
through coral palings, kiosks hung with weed, falling ships
that spun like pearls in honey as they fell, while the great

AIlba, scarcely a glimmer against the gÌoom,
swam on, its jaws wide, ingesting darkness like krill,
until it had swallowed all but its own glowing self,

and, tired ofthe conceit, shed its tons of matter,
rose in time to see fñrst-light ignite the waves,
back in the blue delight of dawn, its ravishing an.