Classic Poem

The tarantula rattling at the lily's foot,
Across the feet of the dead, laid in white sand
Near the coral beach; the small and ruddy crabs
Stilting out of sight, that reverse your name —

And above, the lyric palsy of eucalypti, seeping
A silver swash of something unvisited. . . . Suppose
I count these clean enamel frames of death,
Brutal necklaces of shells around each grave
Laid out so carefully. This pity can be told ...

And in the white sand I can find a name, albeit
In another tongue. Tree-name, flower-name deliberate,
Gainsay the unknown death. . . . The wind,
Sweeping the scrub palms, also is almost kind.

But who is a Captain of this doubloon isle
Without a turnstile? Nought but catchword crabs
Plaguing the hot groins of the underbrush? Who
The commissioner of mildew throughout the senses?
His Carib mathematics dull the bright new lenses.

Under the poinciana, of a noon or afternoon
Let fiery blossoms clot the light, render my ghost,
Sieved upward, black and white along the air —
Until it joins the blue's comedian host.

Let not the pilgrim see himself again
Bound like the dozen turtles on the wharf
Each twilight — still undead, and brine caked in their eyes,
— Huge, overturned: such thunder in their strain!
And clenched beaks coughing for the surge again!

Slagged of the hurricane — I, cast within its flow,
Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant ...
You have given me the shell, Satan — the ember,
Carbolic, of the sun exploded in the sea.