The Tally

They’re counting nails, barrels of salt pork, sacks of tea & sugar, links of hemp, bolts of cloth with dead colors, the whole shape & slack of windy sails down to galley planks & clapboard hued by shame. They’re raising & lowering an anchor clustered with urchins, wondering if sandstone can be taught a lesson if inscribed with names & proclamations. Snuff, powdered wigs— redcoats run hands over porcelain & silverware. They’re uncrating hymnals, lace, volumes of Hobbes, Rousseau, & kegs of rum. Rats scurry across the deck down the wharf, & a gaggle of guinea fowl calls to lost sky from a row of slatted boxes. Knives & forks, wooden pegs, balls of twine, vats of tallow, & whet stones. They’re counting women & men: twenty-two prostitutes, ten pickpockets, one forger, countless thieves of duck eggs & black bread. A soldier pries open a man’s fists to tally twelve marigold seeds— here for lobbing off a half pound of butter. Deck hands winch in the drag of lines. A young officer surveys the prettiest women, before stashing The Collected Quotationsof Pythagoras for the governor. Albatross perched on the mast await another burial at sea, shadowing a stoic nightingale in a bamboo cage mended with yarn where a red-headed woman kneels, whispering his song to him.