The outermost circle belongs to myth. There the helmsman sinks upright
among glittering fish-backs.
How far from us! When day
stands in a sultry windless unrest—
as the Congo’s green shadow holds
the blue men in its vapor—
when all this driftwood on the heart’s sluggish
coiling current
piles up.
Sudden change: in under the repose of the constellations
the tethered ones glide.
Stern high, in a hopeless
position, the hull of a dream, black
against the coastline’s pink. Abandoned
the year’s plunge, quick
and soundless—as the sledge-shadow, doglike, big—
travels over snow,
reaches the wood.