Epigraph

Sea-Drinking cities have a moon-struck air;

Houses are topped with look-outs; as a dog

Looks up with dumb eyes asking, dormers stare

At stranger-vessels and swart cunning faces.

They are touched with long sleeping in the sea-born moon;

They have heard fabled sails slatting in the dark,

Clearing with no papers, unwritten in any log,

Light as thin leaves before the rough typhoon;

Keels trace a phosper-mark,

To allow old ocean-drowned green places.

JOSEPHINE PINCKNEY, Sea-Drinking Cities