Home is mysterious: a place to die, a place to breed:
a rock, a streambed, a burrow. From far far far
a deadly magnet: violent unarguable rapid need.
The waste of waters, printless, the wastes of air, prepare
for them death, failure, but never death of destination:
the thread snapped in the labyrinth, the shifting of a star.
From the Brazilian water-pastures, in her homing passion
the green turtle travels fourteen hundred miles to find
(with tiny water-level eye) Ascension Island reared above her
motion.
Eels. No eel in the western world but is reminded
in autumn of Sargasso: to its weeds and washes comes in the spring
to breed and to die: the elvers will return to do in kind.
The Manx sheerwater (monogamous as a wolf) flying
back back to his unidentifiable cliffy burrow; the al
batross, the salmon: need I labor the point in fin, fur, wing?
The point is established. But if I swim, I sink, if I fly, I fall.
How do I know that over the terrible distances where you are I
must arrive?
Well, the point is established. But the how, the how is not estab
lished at all.
But there is a question below the question of how I contrive
finally to reach you through the disasters of my weather;
I must come, and I come; so I accede, prevail, arrive.
This is the false arrival. O most fortunate fin and feather,
fortunate voyagers come where they had to go.
Now it turns out that this was a shelter, a shelter we leave
together;
for elsewhere. And the shadows, pulsing, say “night”, and the
short wind says “snow”.
Leave a Reply