140
PARTISAN REVIEW
Clings to her drifting hair, and
climbs;
And he who taught their lips to sing
Weeps like the risen sun among
The liquid choirs of his tribes.
The rod bends low, divining land,
And through the sundered water
crawls
A garden holding to her hand
With birds and animals
With men BJld women and waterfalls
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool
of ships
And stunned and still on the green,
laid veil
Sand with legends in its virgin laps
And prophets loud on the burned
dunes;
Insects and valleys hold her thighs
hard,
Times and places grip her breast
bone,
She is breaking with seasons and
clouds;
Round her trailed wrist fresh water
weaves,
With moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the greater waves
A separate river breathes and runs;
Strike and
sin~~;
his catch of fields
For the surge is sown with barley,
The cattle graze on the covered
foam,
The hills have footed the waves
away,
With wild sea fillies and soaking
bridles
With salty colts and gales in their
limbs
All the horses of his haul of mira·
cles
Gallop through the arched, green
farms,
Trot and gallop with gulls upon
them
And thunderbolts in their manes.
0 Rome and Sodom Tomorrow and
London
The country tide is cobbled with
towns,
And steeples pierce the cloud on her
shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman
combed
When his long-legged flesh was a
wind on fire
And his loin was a hunting flame
Coil from the thoroughfares of her
hair
And terribly lead him home alive
Lead her prodigal home to his ter·
ror,
The furious ox-killing house of love.
Down, down, down, under the
ground,
Under the floating villages,
Turns the moon-chained and water–
wound
Metropolis of fishes.
There is nothing left of the sea but
its sound,
Under the earth the loud sea walks,
In deathbeds of orchards the boat
dies down
And the bait is drowned among hay–
ricks,
Land, land, land, nothing remains
Of the pacing, famous sea but its
speech,
And into its talkative seven tombs
The anchor dives through the floors
of a church.
Goodbye, good luck, struck the sun
and the moon,
To the fisherman lost on the land.
He stands alone at the door of his
home,
With his long-legged heart
in
his
hand.
