He barely finishes.
With a roar the surf razes
Last night's sand castle
And seizes her sailor's cap
As
she gasps for breath,
Fighting back tears.
The white dot wags on the water
Like candlelight in a draft,
Flickers, dips and reappears-
As if, someone says, on an altar offered to
The anchored white United Fruit ship,
A hospital ship,
Which it seems to want to draw near.
"Why, it reverences United Fruit"
(Up goes his glass),
"Our brilliantined
Hustler queen, our Muse.
But our Muse keeps his pitch to himself now,
From me anyway-that white lie,
Inspirer of my verse, my
Sermon on San Juan hill
The Bridge,
That hemorrhaged,
Flowing out under the Morgan boardroom doors
Like a ray stalking, a gliding
Opera cape of blood.
"Sweetheart, don't cry. Let's see.
Tolstoy is like the sea.
Shakespeare is like the sea. Or let's say
Whitman is like a spar
Off the
America,
Wooed by the
Pequod,
the
Patna,
the
Lusitania,
The
Titanic,
the maniacs,
The siren idealists-America
Weltering in her element
Like ambergris. Slick sightless mass,
