The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson

Author:Robin Robertson [Robertson, Robin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

AN AMBUSH

None survived.

The platoon had forgotten

the fable of the patient fox, waiting

for the night's sudden

drop to zero.

A minute is all it takes

and the white lake is dotted in stars

already frozen red,

and the blown feathers of ducks.

Just their feet left

still standing there, webbed hard

into the trap-ice.

ODE TO A LARGE TUNA IN THE MARKET

After Neruda

Here,

among the market vegetables,

this torpedo

from the ocean

depths,

a missile

that swam,

now

lying in front of me

dead

surrounded

by the earth's green froth

— these lettuces,

bunches of carrots.

Only you

lived through

the sea's truth, survived

the unknown, the

unfathomable

darkness, the depths

of the sea,

le grand abîme,

only you:

varnished

black-pitched

witness

to that deepest night.

Only you:

dark bullet

barrelled

from the depths,

carrying only

your one wound,

but renewed,

always resurgent,

locked into the current,

fins fletched

like wings

in the torrent,

in the coursing

of the underwater dark,

like a grieving arrow,

sea-javelin, a nerveless

oiled harpoon.

Dead

in front of me,

catafalqued king

of my own ocean;

once

sappy as a sprung fir

in the green turmoil,

once seed

to sea-quake,

tidal wave, now

simply

dead remains.

In the whole market

yours

was the only shape left

with purpose or direction

in this

jumbled ruin

of nature;

you are armed

amongst this greenery,

a solitary man of war,

your flanks and prow

black

and slippery

as if you were still

a well-oiled ship of the wind,

the only

true

machine

of the sea: unflawed,

undefiled,

navigating now

the waters of death.

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