What at best I have half-known.
I turn deaf ears to it for the most part
But now and again
It coincides with a music I find in myself.
I hear
'My glittering green is your power to move,
My spindrift is your fear,
My roar is your blood's emphasis
On what you can hardly face,
A cosmic push towards nothing,
Green weed like a necklace
Round the world's throat that whispers
Always back to me
How those on land live to reject
The insights of the sea.'
--Brendan Kennelly,
from "Islandman":
pages 337-338 of Familiar Strangers: New & Selected Poems 1960-2004
