Standing on my mighty ship’s bow,
beneath the bleeding, bloody twilight,
I believed I could bend the world
by capturing the song
of every passing whale
and marrying those mournful tunes
to the fates of forgotten mermaids.

Believing the evening to be as lonely as I,
I drilled holes through the granite sky
until my bit reached the whiteness of Heaven
and several new stars lit a solemn path unseen before.

And falling all around
came the ghosts of angels
unhinged from the ether
by my thoughts and deeds;
their horrid screams
broke the nighttime in two
as all the world slept softly.

R.P.
South Seas, January, 1868