POEMS
II
Whenever winds are moving and their breath
Heaves at the roped-in bulwarks of this pier
The terns and sea-gulls tremble at your death
In these home-waters. Sailor, can you hear
The Pequod's sea-wings, beating landward, fall
Headlong and break on our Atlantic wall
Off 'Sconset, where the yawing S-toats splash
The bellbuoy with ballooning spinnakers,
As the intangled, screeching mainsheet clears
The blocks: off Madaket, where lubbers lash
The heavy surf and throw their long lead squids
For blue-fish? Sea-gulls blink their heavy lids
Seaward. The winds' wings beat upon the stones,
Sailor, and scream for you and the claws rush
At the sea's throat and wring it in the slush
Of this old Quaker graveyard where the bones
Cry out in the long night for the hurt beast
Bobbing by Ahab's whaleboats in the East.
III
This is the end of the whaleroad and the whale
Who spewed Nantucket bones on the thrashed swell
And stirred the troubled waters to whirlpools
To send the Pequod packing off to hell:
This is the end of them, three-quarters fools,
Snatching at straws to sail
Seaward and seaward on the turntail whale,
Spouting out blood and water as it rolls,
Sick as a dog, to these Atlantic shoals;
Clamavimus,
0 depths. Let the sea-gulls wail
For water, for the deep, where the high tide
Mutters to its hurt self, mutters and ebbs.
Waves wallow in their wash, go out and out,
Leave only the death-rattle of the crabs,
The beach increasing, its enormous snout,
Sucking the ocean's side.
This is the end of running on the waves;
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