Days sailing, and the valleyed sea about us, the same yet ever changing face; days in the sun, and the humped backs of porpoises rolling ahead, and the dark banners of shark fins ... and deep-spangled nights cool with the wind; the flying-fish, blind with our lights, lured thudding against the deck ... And at the wheel two hands and one bare foot gripping the spokes, swinging the sharp tall prow against the push of obstinate waves, holding her hard and true where the Southern Cross blooms like a stalked flower and the clouds sculpture a long-beaked ancient god swallowing the oval moon. And all these days no sail, nor any land -- only the wide, up-tilted plain of sea to the dark edge of the sky. This is the Navel of God, where the sacred star-paths cross and the ocean streams curl back, and the winds halt. Reach back into memory older than ships like this: call out the sailing-directions learned of the brown gods! Here is the great divide where the Firm Canoe Star sinks in the north, behind, and the keel plows on, furrowing straight south to the White Stars that Spring from the World's Root. Only the sea-birds know this place, and the spirits of sailing gods, ancestral voyagers who followed those birds to the sun-drenched ancient islands and established there the foundations of the land. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...NURSE'S SONG, FR. SONGS OF INNOCENCE by WILLIAM BLAKE FIVE EYES by WALTER JOHN DE LA MARE MANDRAKE'S SONG; FRAGMENT by THOMAS LOVELL BEDDOES SCAMPS OF ROMANCE by WILLIAM ROSE BENET OXFORD IN WAR-TIME by LAURENCE BINYON |