Musing

Fog and tide shift the profile here from the familiar to the mysterious.

Kennelly: One from "Islandman"

The sea's music affirms

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