Soundings

March 27 2012

A ship, at sea.

Time measured in days  —

how many to go,

how many out

from home.

Next port-of-call,

where dark fragrant women

await.

Countless fathoms beneath.

An infinitesimal speck

on the endless breadth

of sea.

Stale air, in hollow decks,

held aloft

by the law

of displacement.

A leap

of imagination,

that fails

the instant

you see yourself.

Steady as she goes

knot by knot.

Unravelling in back

pulling her taut.

Vibrations in the steel hull

that thrum unheard,

phosphorescent wake

goes unobserved.

As the big screw churns,

and bulkhead doors

clang shut.

Looking down

at a flat green sea.

Rising up, in our sleep

to engulf us.

This poem began with the simple attraction of a word:  “unfathomable”, and the related verb “to fathom”.

This is a good example of frequent phenomenon in English:  the “verbing” of a noun. The same thing happened to “toast”; and, more recently, “impact”. I think it was a brilliant piece of writing, the first time a daring author took the mundane measurement "fathom" and applied it to impenetrable thought, to deep and insightful thinking. This is especially so because the word takes you underwater, into utter darkness, and so makes the illumination of thought and mind that much more dramatic. 

(In my notorious conservatism, I still find “to impact” inelegant. I silently cringe when I hear it, and – despite the undeniable economy and clarity of this usage – avoid it myself. Of course, I realize that this is antithetical to my professed love of the English language, since the great strength of English is its flexibility and creativity; not to mention its voracious appetite for words appropriated from foreign tongues. This is very different from, for example, French, where the notorious Academie Francaise strenuously resists neologism, and valiantly stands guard against the contamination and anglicization of  that precious tongue. English, in all its vitality, quite rightly scorns such Gallic notions of purity.)

This led me to explore the language of fathoms and knots, the exotic nautical, the ambiguity of “at sea”.

Here, I see the ship as a metaphor for the steady trajectory of a life, violently interrupted by indifferent nature.

How a ship out of sight of land is an island, a world unto itself. Just as we are all ultimately alone in our journey.

At its best, the poem is an exhortation to live mindfully, and in the moment:  observe the phosphorescence; don’t let the steady thrum of the hull lull you into complacency.

The narrator is detached, mostly observing from the 3rd person (with a single unavoidable instance of the more intimate “you”). Only with the very last world of the entire poem does it unexpectedly shift into 1st person, forcing the reader in.