Voyages III

White Buildings

Voyages III

Infinite consanguinity it bearsThis tendered theme of you that lightRetrieves from sea plains where the skyResigns a breast that every wave enthrones;While ribboned water lanes I windAre laved and scattered with no strokeWide from your side, whereto this hourThe sea lifts, also, reliquary hands.

And so, admitted through black swollen gatesThat must arrest all distance otherwise,Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments,Light wrestling there incessantly with light,Star kissing star through wave on wave untoYour body rocking!and where death, if shed,Presumes no carnage, but this single change,-Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawnThe silken skilled transmemberment of song;

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands…

from White Buildings (1926)