The Voyage So they set sail. Like frost she felt
his skin Close on her windows. And their cold wheeled womb Was gliding in From darkness where the fog was night and spume With a storm coming soon. His hands in gloves Dark on the wheel Grew darker. And a sea of hunted whales Foamed like spent worms round keels of blood and tar Where men with long spears pricked and swore. In gales That swept the sea to white scars she could feel Decks pitch and shove Soiled by the blubber. Steering by the star Of David, she was bound for his bare room With sperm and myrrh. And in his house with wine While tides from those rocked waters broke and raged On nape and spine She waited. Fins of spitting gas were caged In a steel net. She lit and tuned the wicks Of wax-fed lamps That dealt hooked crosses over her. And strange In darkness by her image with arms bare She watched the blaze. Then cold beyond the ranee Of any flame drove her numbed thoughts down ramps Where fear that licks Groped with its whips and gills to foul the air And breathe her in. She saw that history staged No one had borne. Love blackened in her palms.
There by the fire she steered as if at home Through gales and calms Outside his world. Here was the fall of Rome Whose wolf she was. Then dreaming down through earth She felt her hair Spread into snakes and heard the hiss of tapes Where men were burning. Death came down with rope That fired her skin and in a million shapes She died again; yet, dying, drained of air, Felt the new birth Clear in her body and, against all hope, Slide from the sea like clean hair through a comb. GEORGE MACBETH
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