Winfield Townley Scott
COLERIDGE
Old father, blessed ghost, mariner
Of my launching, fixer of the bloody sun
Round which my condemned and lifelong voyage
Swerves and follows- follows again, ignorant
What tropic oceans, what icy straits
Hide ahead, or winds across the magnet
Shudder deeper than engines, or tides
Trouble the ways before the invisible pole
Set under that unsetting sun;
old talker
Glittering through my childhood-voice and eyes
Compellent to hold, to send me out to
Find home by way of Vinland, India, by
Horns of undiscovered coasts that sounded
Music undeniable till the sea
Flamed with mirage that grayed all gold;
old
Detective of death in the boy's hand in the lane–
Resolve my life again. By this invocation
Invoke me, blessed ghost, old father.
Jane Mayhall
THE RETURN
He died to a green god.
The past was made into a flowering
like scattered fields never walked upon,
acres that slanted to mountains.
He quickened in green death ascending:
"To speak and speak and mean nothing,
to walk in the world alone."
