The Drunken Boat

We sailed down the unexplored Amazon alone, Indians nailed our guides to painted stakes Naked, used them to practice archery, Bloody agonized targets riddled with feathered shafts.

How could I worry about my barbarous crew? I hauled Flemish grain and English wood; I left the bargemen and their gossip miles behind, The river took my free mind anywhere.

The tides tore at my little boat and blew away My cargo. I lived on land through winter, Hull empty, those fragile floating villages Along the shoreline amazed by our joyful shouts.

Lighter than cork I danced on waves, The storm baptised my sacred awakening, Waves boiled endlessly on the sea bottom, The lanterns’ idiot eyes couldn’t reach them.

Green shit spurted through my seams Sweeter than sour apples to a boy; It cleaned off stains of puke and cheap wine, sucked overboard my anchor and wheel.

Since then I’ve plunged into The Poem Of a milky sea clotted with stars, Gorging on greenish blue where wreckage And brooding corpses often swim by,

Where slow ecstatic rhythms, dyed white, Blaze in noon sun stronger than alcohol, Vaster than the infinite music from above That ripens the stinging wounds of love.

I know the sky slashed open by lightning, waterspouts, Relentless surf, I know the night, know sunrise widening like a continent of doves; I’ve seen what men merely imagined they saw.

I’ve seen the sun sink beneath the horizon, its terrifying Mystic signs, and actors in a Greek tragedy With muscular violet arms on fire The fluted quivering waters millions of miles away.

Listener, I touched astounding Floridas Mingling human-skinned panthers’ eyes with blossoms, Clutched rainbows stretched like infinite reins Tugging at glaucous flocks on the ocean floor,

Seen whales rot in reeking marshes Nets of reed flung over the pathetic corpses. Waters brawling with each other in clear calm! Yellow horizons swarming into indifferent voids!

I watched the deeps bellow and stampede the land, Cattle with flames for tails, gigantic eyes, But never believed Mary could walk on water And close those foaming muzzles with her hand.

And glacial silver suns, red skies and seasick stars, Nauseating wrecks collapsed in brown gulfs Where giant snakes swarming with maggots Drop black-perfumed from crippled trees.

If only I could show children those waves, And gilded singing fish gliding through emerald; Foam roses have blessed my pointless roaming, Imperceptible winds have changed my arms into wings.

I was like a beggar on his knees. Then heaven Dissected me the way my mother did When I’d be sick in bed too nervous To concoct my great visionary poetry.

And there were days when everything was nothing: No islands, no gull droppings on my cannons; O golden flower cups trying to seduce me. I touched myself repeatedly to prove I existed.

I strode the purple mists, steaming and free, Broke through the wall of bleeding sky Sprinkled with lichens of the sun and blue-black phlegm— All poets love that jam the way they love their sperm.

I’ve wept too much; sunrise twists my heart. Every moon and sun is bitter, cruel. Drunk on love’s sour laziness, O Let my keel burst, let me return to the sea!

If I want European water, all I’ll get Is a black pond against a twilight sky. The cows are gone. A sad child kneeling Launches his paper boat frail as a butterfly.

Waves, I can’t bear it any more, drenched in your weary distances: No wings to cut across the cotton carriers’ wakes, Nor swoop against the flags of merchant ships, Nor dive past prison boats grazing their guns.