This poem is taken from PN Review 248, Volume 45 Number 6, July - August 2019.
Three Poems
Diving into the Wreck
You can’t translate its planks
or say
exactly what its split mast means.
Only, say only its rigging’s green,
its deck a carpet squirming weeds,
lisp grasses, fish unseen.
There too,
a whisper buffeted,
a coffer buried,
embroiled in sand and ancient
tynne – spoils scattered on soft
rock surfaces. It’s true, too, this ship
was Flanders-bound, and held old
stores of muscadel and metheglin.
But any further, and the further
we go in, its shape recedes, lies
...
You can’t translate its planks
or say
exactly what its split mast means.
Only, say only its rigging’s green,
its deck a carpet squirming weeds,
lisp grasses, fish unseen.
There too,
a whisper buffeted,
a coffer buried,
embroiled in sand and ancient
tynne – spoils scattered on soft
rock surfaces. It’s true, too, this ship
was Flanders-bound, and held old
stores of muscadel and metheglin.
But any further, and the further
we go in, its shape recedes, lies
...
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