The Ocean Voyager

Rader, Matt (1978)

Original Text

Matt Rader. Living Things. Gibsons, British Columbia: Nightwood Editions, 2008.

1Comes the wayward waters of the coast

2Bearing me on its unbroken back, chartless,

3Without compass or sextant, no ghost

4Or unseen hand guiding me by cutlass

5Or caress: I enter Hecate the only captain

6This vessel will ever know—To hell

7With illness-stitched wool, English pain

8Balled in musket shot, delicate otter shells

9Piled like money in the hold, I sold

10The treacherous lot to the sea, the boatmen

11Tagged and taken by whitecaps, lassoed

12To the beach, wrecked and erected as totems

13By panther-eyed armies of salal and skin,

14Omens for the coming centuries painted

15The ever green of cedar and greed. No sin

16Shone from a lantern's idiot eye; no tainted

17Light spewed from the moon, splattering

18In the Pacific mist like insects. Darkness kissed

19The phosphorescent salmon chattering

20At my hull and scrubbed the stains of piss

21And wine and filthy commerce from my deck.

22Emptier than a child's mind, I made

23The scrambled brains of Desolation on-spec

24My thirteenth day where the tidal braid

25Of the strait cradled and rocked me to sleep

26Like your whisky. A pale bag of deer

27Bobbed at my ribs, uncorked from the deep

28Well of the lived. I danced troughs like fear

29On nervous highways, two-stepped crests

30Like early love, and since then I have flown

31Lightning wracked seas in the fissured west,

32Known what men thought they've known.

33The low sun slouching steadily towards Japan

34Dragging white contrails across the screen

35Of the atmosphere, the sea's eyelids frozen

36Shut by shards of stars, the maddened screed

37Of waves like buffalo stampeding to oblivion

38Upon the shore. I have dreamed the curdled

39Hand of ice in harbour, for the nattering wind

40A muzzle, crows hauling dawn across the world.

41To be sure, I've hunted Haida Gwaii like

42A hound, nosed its monkey beach with my keel

43Then turned on the wheel of the ocean, flocks

44Of glaucous in the endless seas above reeling

45With me, southward through the kelp-nets

46And fermenting weeds, the forever drizzle

47Like chains hanging from heaven's basement.

48Orca offal in the tidal flats, the mud's missal

49Of decay and puzzle, a rotting hull of ribcage.

50I note these things along the way, a hoard

51To lord over and over, arrange and rearrange

52Upon the galley-bench of mind searching for

53Order. Glinting teeth of glaciers cut seawards

54Over thousands of years but I will not rudder

55Or tack here and no creature nor any words

56Alive today will be so when these beasts shudder

57And make their move to water. I would

58Show children these oolichan like candles

59Burning beneath the surface, the driftwood

60Castles yet to be imagined on the beach, mantles

61Of foam and salt the drowned will shoulder

62Like boas from a rubber tree. On my gunnels

63Dance shore birds the weight of a lust-whisper

64In the ear. Comes running through runnels

65Of air, the landfall gossip: floating islands

66Like glass fishing globes snatched from the map

67For souvenirs. Water-drunk, sea-canned

68By briny slosh, my staves won't rot or snap

69And release me finally to the silent squelch

70Of the depths, fathoms beneath in the birdless

71Pitch where I would remain like a ship's wench

72On her knees, gladly, to be relieved of the aegis

73Of my own fate, saved from the sobbing breast

74I have suckled too long now with its shadow

75Flowers and jelly-wasps; no old galleon guest

76On this coast nor armoured monitor would know

77To dredge the surface for my prow; riddled

78With lichens of pale sun, barnacle-tumours,

79Azure phlegm, I drift of my own unbridled

80Arrogance never coming up against the rumoured

81Wall of sky reddened by the savage blood

82Of pilgrims beating their heads out of this

83Labyrinth-mine. I've weathered tsunami and flood,

84Maelstroms of fifty twisted leagues, behemoths

85Of wind hammering nights sidereal architecture

86Its scuddering floes of cloud skewered on

87Mountain parapets, the firmament fractured

88And opened to swallow sailors and all gone

89Wanderers save me. Is it in such elemental

90Rapture that you exist, exiled with the golden

91Plover, the lapwing, caught in the career and pull

92Of here to there and never anywhere you happen

93To be, simply, at the moment? I fear the acrid

94Torpor of this love. I desire a black pond

95Of frogspawn, a sad child burdened by limpid

96Eyes folding an origami boat to chart reed fronds,

97Or a mayfly cocooned in paper and set free

98By fingers from the prison-ship of its first form.

99Such forlorn languor as I call home, I do not see

100History's electric Diogenes pass over me in alarm.

RPO poem Editors

Jim Johnstone

RPO Edition

2013

Special Copyright

Poem used with permission of the author.