Day 183

A Poetry Reading At West Point
by William Matthews
I read to the entire plebe class,
in two batches. Twice the hall filled
with bodies dressed alike, each toting
a copy of my book. What would my
shrink say, if I had one, about
such a dream, if it were a dream?

Question and answer time.
"Sir," a cadet yelled from the balcony,
and gave his name and rank, and then,
closing his parentheses, yelled
"Sir" again. "Why do your poems give
me a headache when I try

to understand them?" he asked. "Do
you want that?" I have a gift for
gentle jokes to defuse tension,
but this was not the time to use it.
"I try to write as well as I can
what it feels like to be human,"

I started, picking my way care-
fully, for he and I were, after
all, pained by the same dumb longings.
"I try to say what I don't know
how to say, but of course I can't
get much of it down at all."

By now I was sweating bullets.
"I don't want my poems to be hard,
unless the truth is, if there is
a truth." Silence hung in the hall
like a heavy fabric. My own
head ached. "Sir," he yelled. "Thank you. Sir."

Day 182

Introduction to Poetry
by Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

 

Day 181

I haven't had internet for three days, thus the late posts.

Please Come Late
by Hugo Williams

Please come late,
so that I have almost given you up
and have started glancing round the room,
thinking everyone is you.
Please don’t come
until I have started missing you,
thinking I will never see you again,
praying you are lost.
Come too late for me not to notice.
Make me suffer,
wondering what you are doing
on the other side of town,
still in your dressing gown.
Make me beg for mercy
when you pick up a magazine.

Are you looking in your mirror,
suddenly remembering me?
I’m on my second coffee by now,
eating the little bits of sugar in my cup.
Haven’t you set out yet?
I decide I don’t want to see you after all.
I don’t really like you.
I’d rather be on my own.
I know it is all over between us

But I go on sitting here,
reading a newspaper,
not understanding a word.
If you came in now, I wouldn’t recognize you.
Don’t come anywhere near me
until I have gone slightly mad for love of you.

  

Day 180

From Blossoms
by Li Young-Lee

From blossoms comes

this brown paper bag of peaches

we bought from the boy

at the bend in the road where we turned toward   

signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,

from sweet fellowship in the bins,

comes nectar at the roadside, succulent

peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,

comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,

to carry within us an orchard, to eat

not only the skin, but the shade,

not only the sugar, but the days, to hold

the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into   

the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live

as if death were nowhere

in the background; from joy

to joy to joy, from wing to wing,

from blossom to blossom to

impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

Day 179

Oh! Death Will Find Me, Long Before I Tire
by Rupert Brooke

Oh! Death will find me, long before I tire
    Of watching you; and swing me suddenly
 Into the shade and loneliness and mire
    Of the last land! There, waiting patiently,

 One day, I think, I'll feel a cool wind blowing,
    See a slow light across the Stygian tide,
 And hear the Dead about me stir, unknowing,
    And tremble. And I shall know that you have died,

 And watch you, a broad-browed and smiling dream,
    Pass, light as ever, through the lightless host,
 Quietly ponder, start, and sway, and gleam --
    Most individual and bewildering ghost! --

 And turn, and toss your brown delightful head
 Amusedly, among the ancient Dead.

Day 178

The Journey
by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice—
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do—
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Day 177

A birthday poem, for my birthday.
On Turning Ten
by Billy Collins
The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I'm coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light--
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed. 

Day 176

Meeting Poets
by Eunice de Souza

Meeting poets I am disconcerted sometimes
 by the colour of their socks
 the suspicion of a wig
 the wasp in the voice
 and an air, sometimes, of dankness.

 Best to meet in poems:
 cool speckled shells
 in which one hears
 a sad but distant sea.

Day 175

I don't actually get this poem, but I have the feeling that I like it...

Linens
by Kay Ryan

There are charms

that forestall harm.

The house bristles

with opportunities

for stasis: refolding

the linens along

their creases, keeping

the spoons and chairs

in their right places.

Nobody needs to

witness one’s exquisite

care with the napkins

for the napkins

to have been the act

that made the fact

unhappen.

Day 174

The Pulley
by George Herbert

When God at first made man,

Having a glass of blessings standing by,

“Let us,” said he, “pour on him all we can.

Let the world’s riches, which dispersèd lie,

   Contract into a span.”

   So strength first made a way;

Then beauty flowed, then wisdom, honour, pleasure.

When almost all was out, God made a stay,

Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,

   Rest in the bottom lay.

   “For if I should,” said he,

“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,

He would adore my gifts instead of me,

And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;

   So both should losers be.

   “Yet let him keep the rest,

But keep them with repining restlessness;

Let him be rich and weary, that at least,

If goodness lead him not, yet weariness

   May toss him to my breast.”

Day 173

Something Whispered in the Shakuhachi
by Garrett Hongo

No one knew the secret of my flutes, and I laugh now because some said I was enlightened. But the truth is I'm only a gardener who before the War was a dirt farmer and learned how to grow the bamboo in ditches next to the fields, how to leave things alone and let the silt build up until it was deep enough to stink bad as night soil, bad as the long, witch-grey hair of a ghost. No secret in that. My land was no good, rocky, and so dry I had to sneak water from the whites, hacksaw the locks off the chutes at night, and blame Mexicans, Filipinos, or else some wicked spirit of a migrant, murdered in his sleep by sheriffs and wanting revenge. Even though they never believed me, it didn't matter--no witnesses, and my land was never thick with rice, only the bamboo growing lush as old melodies and whispering like brush strokes against the fine scroll of wind. I found some string in the shed or else took a few stalks and stripped off their skins, wove the fibers, the floss, into cords I could bind around the feet, ankles, and throats of only the best bamboos. I used an ice pick for an awl, a fish knife to carve finger holes, and a scythe to shape the mouthpiece. I had my flutes. * When the War came, I told myself I lost nothing. My land, which was barren, was not actually mine but leased (we could not own property) and the shacks didn't matter. What did were the power lines nearby and that sabotage was suspected. What mattered to me were the flutes I burned in a small fire by the bath house. All through Relocation, in the desert where they put us, at night when the stars talked and the sky came down and drummed against the mesas, I could hear my flutes wail like fists of wind whistling through the barracks. I came out of Camp, a blanket slung over my shoulder, found land next to this swamp, planted strawberries and beanplants, planted the dwarf pines and tended them, got rich enough to quit and leave things alone, let the ditches clog with silt again and the bamboo grow thick as history. * So, when it's bad now, when I can't remember what's lost and all I have for the world to take means nothing, I go out back of the greenhouse at the far end of my land where the grasses go wild and the arroyos come up with cat's-claw and giant dahlias, where the children of my neighbors consult with the wise heads of sunflowers, huge against the sky, where the rivers of weather and the charred ghosts of old melodies converge to flood my land and sustain the one thicket of memory that calls for me to come and sit among the tall canes and shape full-throated songs out of wind, out of bamboo, out of a voice that only whispers.

Day 172

A Letter
by Anthony Hecht

I have been wondering What you are thinking about, and by now suppose It is certainly not me. But the crocus is up, and the lark, and the blundering Blood knows what it knows. It talks to itself all night, like a sliding moonlit sea. Of course, it is talking of you. At dawn, where the ocean has netted its catch of lights, The sun plants one lithe foot On that spill of mirrors, but the blood goes worming through Its warm Arabian nights, Naming your pounding name again in the dark heart-root. Who shall, of course, be nameless. Anyway, I should want you to know I have done my best, As I'm sure you have, too. Others are bound to us, the gentle and blameless Whose names are not confessed In the ceaseless palaver. My dearest, the clear unquaried blue Of those depths is all but blinding. You may remember that once you brought my boys Two little woolly birds. Yesterday the older one asked for you upon finding Your thrush among his toys. And the tides welled about me, and I could find no words. There is not much else to tell. One tries one's best to continue as before, Doing some little good. But I would have you know that all is not well With a man dead set to ignore The endless repetitions of his own murmurous blood.

Day 171

Richard Cory
by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Day 170

In my craft or sullen art
by Dylan Thomas

In my craft or sullen art
Exercised in the still night
When only the moon rages
And the lovers lie abed
With all their griefs in their arms,
I labour by singing light
Not for ambition or bread
Or the strut and trade of charms
On the ivory stages
But for the common wages
Of their most secret heart.

Not for the proud man apart
From the raging moon I write
On these spindrift pages
Not for the towering dead
With their nightingales and psalms
But for the lovers, their arms
Round the griefs of the ages,
Who pay no praise or wages
Nor heed my craft or art.

Day 169

Dulce et Decorum Est
by Wilfred Owen

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,

And towards our distant rest began to trudge.

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.—

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace

Behind the wagon that we flung him in,

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,

Bitten as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,—

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory,

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.

Day 168

If By Dull Rhymes Our English Must Be Chain'd
by John Keats

If by dull rhymes our English must be chain'd,

   And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet

Fetter'd, in spite of pained loveliness;

Let us find out, if we must be constrain'd,

   Sandals more interwoven and complete

To fit the naked foot of poesy;

Let us inspect the lyre, and weigh the stress

Of every chord, and see what may be gain'd

   By ear industrious, and attention meet:

Misers of sound and syllable, no less

   Than Midas of his coinage, let us be

   Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;

So, if we may not let the Muse be free,

   She will be bound with garlands of her own.

Day 167

The Wind, One Brilliant Day
by Antonio Machado
Translated by Robert Bly
Llamó a mi corazón, un claro día,

con un perfume de jazmín, el viento.

—A cambio de este aroma,
todo el aroma de tus rosas quiero.

—No tengo rosas; flores
en mi jardín no hay ya; todas han muerto.

Me llevaré los llantos de las fuentes,
las hojas amarillas y los mustios pétalos.
Y el viento huyó... Mi corazón sangraba...

Alma, ¿qué has hecho de tu pobre huerto? 

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

Day 166

Child
by Sylvia Plath

Your clear eye is the one absolutely beautiful thing.
I want to fill it with color and ducks,
The zoo of the new
Whose name you meditate--
April snowdrop, Indian pipe,
Little

Stalk without wrinkle,
Pool in which images
Should be grand and classical

Not this troublous
Wringing of hands, this dark
Ceiling without a star.

Day 165

The Word
by Tony Hoagland

 Down near the bottom
 of the crossed-out list
 of things you have to do today,

 between "green thread"
 and "broccoli" you find
 that you have penciled "sunlight."

 Resting on the page, the word
 is as beautiful, it touches you
 as if you had a friend

 and sunlight were a present
 he had sent you from some place distant
 as this morning -- to cheer you up,

 and to remind you that,
 among your duties, pleasure
 is a thing,

 that also needs accomplishing
 Do you remember?
 that time and light are kinds

 of love, and love
 is no less practical
 than a coffee grinder

 or a safe spare tire?
 Tomorrow you may be utterly
 without a clue

 but today you get a telegram,
 from the heart in exile
 proclaiming that the kingdom

 still exists,
 the king and queen alive,
 still speaking to their children,

 - to any one among them
 who can find the time,
 to sit out in the sun and listen.

Day 164

The End and the Beginning
by Wislawa Szymborska

After every war
someone has to clean up.
Things won't
straighten themselves up, after all.
Someone has to push the rubble
to the side of the road,
so the corpse-filled wagons
can pass.
Someone has to get mired
in scum and ashes,
sofa springs,
splintered glass,
and bloody rags.
Someone has to drag in a girder
to prop up a wall,
Someone has to glaze a window,
rehang a door.
Photogenic it's not,
and takes years.
All the cameras have left
for another war.
We'll need the bridges back,
and new railway stations.
Sleeves will go ragged
from rolling them up.
Someone, broom in hand,
still recalls the way it was.
Someone else listens
and nods with unsevered head.
But already there are those nearby
starting to mill about
who will find it dull.
From out of the bushes
sometimes someone still unearths
rusted-out arguments
and carries them to the garbage pile.
Those who knew
what was going on here
must make way for
those who know little.
And less than little.
And finally as little as nothing.
In the grass that has overgrown
causes and effects,
someone must be stretched out
blade of grass in his mouth
gazing at the clouds.

Day 163

This poem didn't strike me as anything particularly special at first, but reading the review of it on Wondering Minstrels helped open my eyes.

Good
by R.S. Thomas

The old man comes out on the hill
and looks down to recall earlier days
in the valley. He sees the stream shine,
the church stand, hears the litter of
children's voices. A chill in the flesh
tells him that death is not far off
now: it is the shadow under the great boughs
of life. His garden has herbs growing.
The kestrel goes by with fresh prey
in its claws. The wind scatters the scent
of wild beans. The tractor operates
on the earth's body. His grandson is there
ploughing; his young wife fetches him
cakes and tea and a dark smile. It is well.

Day 162

I'm a Fool to Love You
by Cornelius Eady

Some folks will tell you the blues is a woman,

Some type of supernatural creature.

My mother would tell you, if she could,

About her life with my father,

A strange and sometimes cruel gentleman.

She would tell you about the choices

A young black woman faces.

Is falling in love with some man

A deal with the devil

In blue terms, the tongue we use

When we don't want nuance

To get in the way,

When we need to talk straight.

My mother chooses my father

After choosing a man

Who was, as we sing it,

Of no account.

This man made my father look good,

That's how bad it was.

He made my father seem like an island

In the middle of a stormy sea,

He made my father look like a rock.

And is the blues the moment you realize

You exist in a stacked deck,

You look in a mirror at your young face,

The face my sister carries,

And you know it's the only leverage

You've got.

Does this create a hurt that whispers

How you going to do?

Is the blues the moment

You shrug your shoulders

And agree, a girl without money

Is nothing, dust

To be pushed around by any old breeze.

Compared to this,

My father seems, briefly,

To be a fire escape.

This is the way the blues works

Its sorry wonders,

Makes trouble look like

A feather bed,

Makes the wrong man's kisses

A healing.

Day 161

I'm liking A.E. Housman, and this poem reminds me of my beloved study abroad.

A Shropshire Lad XV
by A. E. Housman

Look not in my eyes, for fear
  They mirror true the sight I see,
  And there you find your face too clear
  And love it and be lost like me.
  One the long nights through must lie
  Spent in star-defeated sighs,
  But why should you as well as I
  Perish? gaze not in my eyes.
  A Grecian lad, as I hear tell,
  One that many loved in vain,
  Looked into a forest well
  And never looked away again.
  There, when the turf in springtime flowers,
  With downward eye and gazes sad,
  Stands amid the glancing showers
  A jonquil, not a Grecian lad.

Day 160

Judging by the title, this should be good.

Woman's Constancy
by John Donne

Now thou has loved me one whole day,

Tomorrow when you leav’st, what wilt thou say?

Wilt thou then antedate some new-made vow?

            Or say that now

We are not just those persons which we were?

Or, that oaths made in reverential fear

Of Love, and his wrath, any may forswear?

Or, as true deaths true marriages untie,

So lovers’ contracts, images of those,

Bind but till sleep, death’s image, them unloose?

            Or, your own end to justify,

For having purposed change and falsehood, you

Can have no way but falsehood to be true?

Vain lunatic, against these ‘scapes I could

            Dispute and conquer, if I would,

            Which I abstain to do,

For by tomorrow, I may think so too.   

Day 159

Harp Song of the Dane Women
by Rudyard Kipling

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in---
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you---
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken---

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables---
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker ?

Day 158

The Heart Under Your Heart
by Craig Arnold

Who gives his heart away too easily must have a heart
under his heart.
—James Richardson

The heart under your heart
is not the one you share
so readily so full of pleasantry
& tenderness
it is a single blackberry
at the heart of a bramble
or else some larger fruit
heavy the size of a fist
it is full of things
you have never shared with me
broken engagements bruises
& baking dishes
the scars on top of scars
of sixteen thousand pinpricks
the melody you want so much to carry
& always fear black fear
or so I imagine you have never shown me
& how could I expect you to
I also have a heart beneath my heart
perhaps you have seen or guessed
it is a beach at night
where the waves lap & the wind hisses
over a bank of thin
translucent orange & yellow jingle shells
on the far side of the harbor
the lighthouse beacon
shivers across the black water
& someone stands there waiting

Day 157

I read this poem yesterday, but didn't get a chance to post it.

Onions
by William Matthews

How easily happiness begins by   

dicing onions. A lump of sweet butter   

slithers and swirls across the floor   

of the sauté pan, especially if its   

errant path crosses a tiny slick

of olive oil. Then a tumble of onions.

This could mean soup or risotto   

or chutney (from the Sanskrit

chatni, to lick). Slowly the onions   

go limp and then nacreous

and then what cookbooks call clear,   

though if they were eyes you could see

clearly the cataracts in them.

It’s true it can make you weep

to peel them, to unfurl and to tease   

from the taut ball first the brittle,   

caramel-colored and decrepit

papery outside layer, the least

recent the reticent onion

wrapped around its growing body,   

for there’s nothing to an onion

but skin, and it’s true you can go on   

weeping as you go on in, through   

the moist middle skins, the sweetest

and thickest, and you can go on   

in to the core, to the bud-like,   

acrid, fibrous skins densely   

clustered there, stalky and in-

complete, and these are the most   

pungent, like the nuggets of nightmare

and rage and murmury animal   

comfort that infant humans secrete.   

This is the best domestic perfume.   

You sit down to eat with a rumor

of onions still on your twice-washed   

hands and lift to your mouth a hint

of a story about loam and usual   

endurance. It’s there when you clean up   

and rinse the wine glasses and make   

a joke, and you leave the minutest   

whiff of it on the light switch,

later, when you climb the stairs.

Day 156

Heirloom 
by A.M. Klein

My father bequeathed me no wide estates;   

No keys and ledgers were my heritage;   

Only some holy books with yahrzeit dates   

Writ mournfully upon a blank front page—

Books of the Baal Shem Tov, and of his wonders;   

Pamphlets upon the devil and his crew;

Prayers against road demons, witches, thunders;   

And sundry other tomes for a good Jew.

Beautiful: though no pictures on them, save   

The scorpion crawling on a printed track;   

The Virgin floating on a scriptural wave,   

Square letters twinkling in the Zodiac.

The snuff left on this page, now brown and old,   

The tallow stains of midnight liturgy—

These are my coat of arms, and these unfold   

My noble lineage, my proud ancestry!

And my tears, too, have stained this heirloomed ground,   

When reading in these treatises some weird   

Miracle, I turned a leaf and found

A white hair fallen from my father’s beard.

Day 155

I stumbled upon this poem on the poetry blog, The Wondering Minstrels, and it just so happens that I'm in the process of watching Elizabeth I, the HBO miniseries with the lovely and fantastically talented Helen Mirren.  Also, Elizabeth I is one of my idols, so here we go...

On Monsieur's Departure
by Queen Elizabeth I

I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
 I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
 I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
 I seem stark mute but inwardly to prate.
 I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned.
 Since from myself another self I turned.

 My care is like my shadow in the sun,
 Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
 Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
 His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
 No means I find to rid him from my breast,
 Till by the end of things it be supprest.

 Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
 For I am soft and made of melting snow;
 Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
 Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
 Or let me live with some more sweet content,
 Or die and so forget what love ere meant.

Day 154

Saw this poem on the London Underground, and it's lovely.

Whalesong
by Sophie Stephenson-Wright

I boom-mumble I bass-blow

I hull-heavy I big/slow

I boat bump I limpet-skin

I soft-sink I sky-swim

I sea-search I salt-swallow

I bone-backed I fluke-follow

I gulf-cross I listen-talk

I moon-map I wave-walk

I tail-turn I time-keep

I ship-wreck I song-seek

I blue-blood I grumble-sing

I fish-heart I dream king