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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


FOUR MATRICES: 4. THE SEA by JAMES HARRISON

Poet Analysis

First Line: SCREW-GUMPTION DESPITE COLD RAIN AND CLOUDS DRIFTING BELOW TREETOPS
Last Line: ROWBOATS SUNK IN FIFTY FATHOMS. AFTER DRIFTING THE OCEANS FOR YEARS.
Subject(s): SEA; OCEAN;

Screw-gumption despite cold rain and clouds drifting below treetops.
Poor thing, strung up by false & falser delights; not lost,
a word that weighs nothing except @3lost@1 to one's self, floating.
How light these imagined loves, floating too, from the head
in a night's sleep when the body's heat is nonmental.
It's a happy mage that walks through the world with his eyes
earthward using clouds only for a pick-me-up. The brain's not
a solid thing he thinks eating calf's brains. But butchers
are solid people. Somewhere between butcher and that unstable
weight is ballad, some song, though not moving to our obvious
harmonies. Count those waterbirds and beware, costumed as women;
part air and part water. But we are drawn to them as clumsy
rowboats sunk in fifty fathoms. After drifting the oceans for years.



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