Landfall, Grenada

[FOR ROBERT HEAD, MARINER]

Where you are rigidly anchored,

the groundswell of blue foothills, the blown canes

surging to cumuli cannot be heard;

like the slow, seamless ocean,

one motion folds the grass where you were lowered,

and the tiered sea

whose grandeurs you detested

climbs out of sound.

Its moods held no mythology

for you, it was a working-place

of tonnage and ruled stars;

you chose your landfall with a mariner’s

casual certainty,

calm as that race

into whose heart you harboured;

your death was a log’s entry,

your suffering held the strenuous

reticence of those

whose rites are never public,

hating to impose, to offend.

Deep friend, teach me to learn

such ease, such landfall going,

such mocking tolerance of those

neat, gravestone elegies

that rhyme our end.