Asking an English major for a favorite poem, and expecting an immediate answer might well be an exercise in futility. Melanie Bettinelli, who blogs about literature (and other things) at The Wine Dark Sea offered me the poet Marianne Moore as part of a Facebook game. Little did she know Moore is one of my favorites, along with two other poets from that era, William Carlos Williams, and Elizabeth Bishop. I can’t say I love Moore’s poems as much as I love their form, her style. It’s free and long and even as I write this long long sentence I see her influence in my writing. Maybe I should go back to writing poetry.
Here’s the poem I selected for the challenge because lately it seems all I do is stand “looking into the sea.” I don’t know what answers I seek there, or even if I know the questions, but the line “the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look” resonates with me. Is my look so deep, so intent, that it violates? Maybe, like the movement of fishermen’s oars, I look at the sea as if there were no death.
A Grave
Man looking into the sea,
taking the view from those who have as much right to it as
you have to it yourself,
it is human nature to stand in the middle of a thing,
but you cannot stand in the middle of this;
the sea has nothing to give but a well excavated grave.
The firs stand in a procession, each with an emerald turkey-
foot at the top,
reserved as their contours, saying nothing;
repression, however, is not the most obvious characteristic of
the sea;
the sea is a collector, quick to return a rapacious look.
There are others besides you who have worn that look —
whose expression is no longer a protest; the fish no longer
investigate them
for their bones have not lasted:
men lower nets, unconscious of the fact that they are
desecrating a grave,
and row quickly away — the blades of the oars
moving together like the feet of water-spiders as if there were
no such thing as death.
The wrinkles progress among themselves in a phalanx — beautiful
under networks of foam,
and fade breathlessly while the sea rustles in and out of the
seaweed;
the birds swim through the air at top speed, emitting cat-calls
as heretofore —
the tortoise-shell scourges about the feet of the cliffs, in motion
beneath them;
and the ocean, under the pulsation of lighthouses and noise of
bell-buoys,
advances as usual, looking as if it were not that ocean in which
dropped things are bound to sink —
in which if they turn and twist, it is neither with volition nor
consciousness.
