O Sea, That Knowest Thy Strength
Hast thou been known to sing,
O sea, that knowest thy strength?
Hast thou been known to sing?
Thy voice, can it rejoice?
Naught save great sorrowing,
To me, thy sounds incessant
Do express, naught save great sorrowing.
Thy lips, they daily kiss the sand,
In wanton mockery.
Deep in thine awful heart
Thou dost not love the land.
Thou dost not love the land.
O sea, that knowest thy strength.
“These sands, these listless, helpless,
Sun-gold sands, I’ll play with these,
Or crush them in my white-fanged hands
For leagues, to please
The thing in me that is the Sea,
Intangible, untamed,
Untamed and wild,
And wild and weird and strong!”
This poem is in the public domain. Published in Poem-a-Day on March 28, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.
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STILL(ING) The Ocean
The ocean and its waters seem omnipresent and omniscient; it appears to house fossils of long forgotten tales of journeying into the unknown, and deluges of sadness for souls that perished into its watery canyons.
It bears and moves shared memories of slaves drowned for their rebellion or sickness, the ocean in its stillness is where wet worlds inhabited by large and tiny organisms unbeknown to man thrive.
Water reflects the intertwined facets of human history, from cradle to graves which would soon be swallowed by rising levels as glaciers melt uncontrollably.
The ocean is that economic corridor that fuels he world’s capitalist machinery, water is a pathway from here to there, a transitory space where time leads to escapes to freedom, of eternal wandering, of discovering and rediscovering synergy spilled out of the ocean unto the open sands.
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