Bull Eclogues: "The Island"

Bull Eclogues
“There's a part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I have been warring against it for all of my adult life."

The Cretan

The Island

From week to week I walk on water, fight
the urge to look down at the deluged faces
whose liquid hands support my stony feet
and hold on for the heart’s faltering hit.

When squalls rise up and shake the long-stemmed brain,
even the faithful look for land, and land
their bodies on the strong arms of a beach,
the grass of books, tobacco flowers, nightcaps.

Turned, blown, off-course, I throw me on this room.
For here the kri-kri leaps with the white mountains,
the citron bubbles in the hand, the olive branch

presented to a beast is not so beastly,
but promises a civilization
of the sea within, though not the sea without.


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