Cale Rice - Song-Surf

Or, dost thou labour with the drifting bones
Of countless dead, thou mighty Alchemist,
Within whose stormy crucible the stones
Of sunk primordial shores, granite and schist,
Are crumbled by thine all-abrasive beat?
With immemorial chanting to the moon,
And cosmic incantation, dost thou crave
Rest to be found not till thy wild be strewn
Frigid and desert over earth's last grave?

Thou seemest with immensity mad, blind —
With raving deaf, with wandering forlorn;
Parent of Demogorgon whose dire mind
Is night and earthquake, shapeless shame and scorn
Of the o'ermounting birth of Harmony.
Bound in thy briny bed and gnawing earth
With foamy writhing and fierce-panted tides,
Thou art as Fate in torment of a dearth
Of black disaster and destruction's strides.

And how thou dost drive silence from the world,
Incarnate Motion of all mystery!
Whose waves are fury-wings, whose winds are hurled
Whither thy Ghost tempestuous can see
A desolate apocalypse of death.
Oh, how thou dost drive silence from the world,
With emerald overflowing, waste on waste
Of flashing susurration, dashed and swirled
O'er isles and continents that shrink abased!

Nay, frustrate Hope art thou, of the Unknown,
Gathered from primal mist and firmament;
A surging shape of Life's unfathomed moan,
Whelming humanity with fears unmeant.
Yet do I love thee, O, above all fear,
And loving thee unconquerably trust
The runes that from thy ageless surfing start
Would read, were they revealed, gust upon gust,
That Immortality is might of heart!

So wan, so unavailing,
Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!

Last night, sphered in thy shining,
A Circe – mystic destinies divining;

To-day but as a feather
Torn from a seraph's wing in sinful weather,

Down-drifting from the portals
Of Paradise, unto the land of mortals.

Yet do I feel thee awing
My heart with mystery, as thy updrawing

Moves thro' the tides of Ocean
And leaves lorn beaches barren of its motion;

Or strands upon near shallows
The wreck whose weirded form at night unhallows

The fisher maiden's prayers —
"For him ! – that storms may take not unawares!"

So wan, so unavailing,
Across the vacant day-blue dimly trailing!

But Night shall come atoning
Thy phantom life thro' day, and high enthroning

Thee in her chambers arrased
With star-hieroglyphs, leave thee unharassed

To glide with silvery passion,
Till in earth's shadow swept thy glowings ashen.

Oh, fisher-fleet, go in from the sea
And furl your wings.
The bay is gray with the twilit spray
And the loud surf springs.

The chill buoy-bell is rung by the hands
Of all the drowned,
Who know the woe of the wind and tow
Of the tides around.

Go in, go in! Oh, haste from the sea,
And let them rest —
A son and one who was wed and one
Who went down unblest.

Aye, even as I, whose hands at the bell
Now labour most.
The tomb has gloom, but Oh, the doom
Of the drear sea-ghost!

He evermore must wander the ooze
Beneath the wave,
Forlorn – to warn of the tempest born,
And to save – to save!

Then go, go in! and leave us the sea,
For only so
Can peace release us and give us ease
Of our salty woe.

I met a child upon the moor
A-wading down the heather;
She put her hand into my own,
We crossed the fields together.

I led her to her father's door —
A cottage mid the clover.
I left her – and the world grew poor
To me, a childless rover.

I met a maid upon the moor,
The morrow was her wedding.
Love lit her eyes with lovelier hues
Than the eve-star was shedding.

She looked a sweet good-bye to me,
And o'er the stile went singing.
Down all the lonely night I heard
But bridal bells a-ringing.

I met a mother on the moor,
By a new grave a-praying.
The happy swallows in the blue
Upon the winds were playing.

"Would I were in his grave," I said,
"And he beside her standing!"
There was no heart to break if death
For me had made demanding.

Down the palm-way from Eden in the mid-night
Lay dreaming Eve by her outdriven mate,
Pillowed on lilies that still told the sweet
Of birth within the Garden's ecstasy.
Pitiful round her face that could not lose
Its memory of God's perfecting was strewn
Her troubled hair, and sigh grieved after sigh
Along her loveliness in the white moon.
Then sudden her dream, too cruelly impent
With pain, broke and a cry fled shuddering
Into the wounded stillness from her lips —
As, cold, she fearfully felt for his hand,
And tears, that had before ne'er visited
Her lids with anguish, drew from her the moan:

"Oh, Adam! What have I dreamed?
Now do I understand His words, so dim
To creatures that had quivered but with bliss!
Since at the dusk thy kiss to me, and I
Wept at caresses that were once all joy,
I have slept, seeing through Futurity
The uncreated ages visibly!
Foresuffering phantoms crowded in the womb
Of Time, and all with lamentable mien
Accusing without mercy, thee and me!
And without pity! for tho' some were far
From birth, and without name, others were near —
Sodom and dark Gomorrah – from whose flames
Fleeing one turned … how like her look to mine
When the tree's horror trembled on my taste!
And Babylon upbuilded on our sin;
And Nineveh, a city sinking slow
Under a shroud of sandy centuries
That hid me not from the buried cursing eyes
Of women who e'er-bitterly gave birth!
Ah, to be mother of all misery!
To be first-called out of the earth and fail
For a whole world! To shame maternity
For women evermore – women whose tears
Flooding the night, no hope can wipe away!
To see the wings of Death, as, Adam, thou
Hast not, endlessly beating, and to hear
The swooning ages suffer up to God!
And Oh, that birth-cry of a guiltless child
In it are sounding of our sin and woe,