The Castaway

Obscurest night involv'd the sky,
          Th' Atlantic billows roar'd,
When such a destin'd wretch as I,
          Wash'd headlong from on board,
Of friends, of hope, of all bereft,
          His floating home for ever left.

No braver chief could Albion boast
          Than he with whom he went,
Nor ever ship left Albion's coast,
          With warmer wishes sent.
He lov'd them both, but both in vain,
          Nor him beheld, nor her again.

Not long beneath the whelming brine,
          Expert to swim, he lay;
Nor soon he felt his strength decline,
          Or courage die away;
But wag'd with death a lasting strife,
          Supported by despair of life.

He shouted: nor his friends had fail'd
          To check the vessel's course,
But so the furious blast prevail'd,
          That, pitiless perforce,
They left their outcast mate behind,
          And scudded still before the wind.

Some succour yet they could afford;
          And, such as storms allow,
The cask, the coop, the floated cord,
          Delay'd not to bestow.
But he (they knew) nor ship, nor shore,
          Whate'er they gave, should visit more.

Nor, cruel as it seem'd, could he
          Their haste himself condemn,
Aware that flight, in such a sea,
          Alone could rescue them;
Yet bitter felt it still to die
          Deserted, and his friends so nigh.

He long survives, who lives an hour
          In ocean, self-upheld;
And so long he, with unspent pow'r,
          His destiny repell'd;
And ever, as the minutes flew,
          Entreated help, or cried—Adieu!

At length, his transient respite past,
          His comrades, who before
Had heard his voice in ev'ry blast,
          Could catch the sound no more.
For then, by toil subdued, he drank
          The stifling wave, and then he sank.

No poet wept him: but the page
          Of narrative sincere;
That tells his name, his worth, his age,
          Is wet with Anson's tear.
And tears by bards or heroes shed
          Alike immortalize the dead.

I therefore purpose not, or dream,
          Descanting on his fate,
To give the melancholy theme
          A more enduring date:
But misery still delights to trace
          Its semblance in another's case.

No voice divine the storm allay'd,
          No light propitious shone;
When, snatch'd from all effectual aid,
          We perish'd, each alone:
But I beneath a rougher sea,
          And whelm'd in deeper gulfs than he.

--William Cowper (1731-1800), prominent English poet and inspiration to the early Romantics. This was believed to be his last poem written before his death. It is featured in the film version of the novel Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen, chosen by screenwriter and actress Emma Thompson. Cowper was listed as Marianne's favorite poet in the novel, but the poem read by Edward was left unnamed. Technically this choice is an anachronism, as the novel is set between 1795 and 1800, and this poem was published posthumously in 1803.

Image: Man Overboard, Rescue Launch from HMS 'St Jean d'Acre' by Oswald Walters Bryerly (1817-1894)

Everything is Plundered

Everything is plundered, betrayed, sold,

Death’s great black wing scrapes the air,
Misery gnaws to the bone.
Why then do we not despair?

By day, from the surrounding woods,
cherries blow summer into town;
at night the deep transparent skies
glitter with new galaxies.

And the miraculous comes so close
to the ruined, dirty houses—
something not known to anyone at all,
but wild in our breast for centuries.

--Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966), Russian poet and activist against Stalinism, translated by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayvard

I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw, ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light’s delay.

With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

I am gall, I am heartburn. God’s most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.

Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.

-- Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)- poet, English supporter of the Oxford movement, convert to Catholicism, Jesuit priest

The Porch

Do you want to know his name?
It is forgotten. Would you learn
what he was like? He was like
anyone else, a man with ears
and eyes. Be it sufficient
that in a church porch on an evening
in winter, the moon rising, the frost
sharp, he was driven to his knees and for no reason
he knew. The cold came at him;
his breath was carved angularly
as the tombstones; an owl screamed.

He had no power to pray.
His back turned on the interior
he looked out on a universe
that was without knowledge
of him and kept his place
there for an hour on that lean
threshold, neither outside nor in.

-- R. S. Thomas (1913-2000), Welsh poet and Anglican priest

Image: detail from a door from the Passion side of La Sagrada Familia Basilica in Barcelona, Spain.

Even Bees Know What Zero Is

That’s enough memories, thank you, I’m stuffed.
I’ll need a memory vomitorium if this goes on.
How much attention can one man have?
Which reminds me: once I let the gas go on flowing
after my car was full and watched it spill its smell
(and potential hell) all over the ground around me.
I had to pay for that, and in currency quite other than attention.
I’ve had my fill of truth, too, come to think of it.
It’s all smeary in me, I’m like a waterlogged Bible:
enough with the aborted prophecies and garbled laws,
ancient texts holey as a teen’s jeans, begone begats!
Live long enough, and you can’t tell what’s resignation, what resolve.
That’s the bad news. The good news? You don’t give a shit.
My life. It’s like a library that closes for a long, long time
—a lifetime, some of  the disgrunts mutter—
and when it opens opens only to an improved confusion:
theology where poetry should be, psychology crammed with math.
And I’m all the regulars searching for their sections
and I’m the detonated disciplines too.
But most of all I’m the squat, smocked, bingo-winged woman
growing more granitic and less placable by the hour
as citizen after citizen blurts some version of
“What the hell!” or “I thought you’d all died!”
and the little stamp she stamps on the flyleaf
to tell you when your next generic mystery is due
that thing goes stamp right on my very soul.
Which is one more thing I’m done with, by the way,
the whole concept of soul. Even bees know what zero is,
scientists have learned, which means bees know my soul.
I’m done, I tell you, I’m due, I’m Oblivion’s datebook.
I’m a sunburned earthworm, a mongoose’s milk tooth,
a pleasure tariff, yesterday’s headcheese, spiritual gristle.
I’m the Apocalypse’s popsicle. I’m a licked Christian.

-- Christian Wiman (1966- ), American poet, essayist, and professor, former editor of Poetry magazine, cancer survivor, former Southern Baptist

Here is a link to an interview from 2018 with Krita Tippett at On Being.

Image: flowers blooming in the ruins of the Augustinian nunnery on Iona.