The bows glided1 down， and the coast
Blackened with birds took a last look
At his thrashing hair and whale-blue eye；
The trodden town rang its cobbles for luck.
Then good-bye to the fishermanned
Boat with its anchor free and fast
As a bird hooking over the sea，
High and dry by the TOP of the mast，
Whispered the affectionate sand
And the bulwarks2 of the dazzled quay3.
For my sake sail， and never look back，
Said the looking land.
Sails drank the wind， and white as milk
He sped into the drinking dark；
The sun shipwrecked west on a pearl
And the moon swam out of its hulk.
Funnels4 and masts went by in a whirl.
Good-bye to the man on the sea-legged deck
To the gold gut5 that sings on his reel
To the bait that stalked out of the sack，
For we saw him throw to the swift flood
A girl alive with his hooks through her lips；
All the fishes were rayed in blood，
Said the dwindling7 ships.
Good-bye to chimneys and funnels，
Old wives that spin in the smoke，
He was blind to the eyes of candles
In the praying windows of waves
But heard his bait buck8 in the wake
And tussle9 in a shoal of loves.
Now cast down your rod， for the whole
Of the sea is hilly with whales，
She longs among horses and angels，
The rainbow-fish bend in her joys，
Floated the lost cathedral
Chimes of the rocked buoys10.
Where the anchor rode like a gull11
Miles over the moonstruck boat
A squall of birds bellowed12 and fell，
A cloud blew the rain from its throat；
He saw the storm smoke out to kill
With fuming13 bows and ram14 of ice，
Fire on starlight， rake Jesu's stream；
And nothing shone on the water's face
But the oil and bubble of the moon，
Plunging15 and piercing in his course
The lured16 fish under the foam17
Witnessed with a kiss.
Whales in the wake like capes18 and Alps
Quaked the sick sea and snouted deep，
Deep the great bushed19 bait with raining lips
Slipped the fins20 of those humpbacked tons
And fled their love in a weaving dip.
Oh， Jericho was falling in their lungs！
She nipped and ped in the nick of love，
Spun21 on a spout22 like a long-legged ball
Till every beast blared down in a swerve23
Till every turtle crushed from his shell
Till every bone in the rushing grave
Rose and crowed and fell！
Good luck to the hand on the rod，
There is thunder under its thumbs；
Gold gut is a lightning thread，
His fiery24 reel sings off its flames，
The whirled boat in the burn of his blood
Is crying from nets to knives，
Oh the shearwater birds and their boatsized brood
Oh the bulls of Biscay and their calves26
Are making under the green， laid veil
The long-legged beautiful bait their wives.
Break the black news and paint on a sail
Huge weddings in the waves，
Over the wakeward-flashing spray
Over the gardens of the floor
Clash out the mounting dolphin's day，
My mast is a bell-spire，
Strike and smoothe， for my decks are drums，
Sing through the water-spoken prow27
The ocTOPus28 walking into her limbs
The polar eagle with his tread of snow.
From salt-lipped beak29 to the kick of the stern
Sing how the seal has kissed her dead！
The long， laid minute's bride drifts on
Old in her cruel bed.
Over the graveyard30 in the water
Mountains and galleries beneath
Nightingale and hyena31
Rejoicing for that drifting death
Sing and howl through sand and anemone32
Valley and sahara in a shell，
Oh all the wanting flesh his enemy
Thrown to the sea in the shell of a girl
Is old as water and plain as an eel6；
Always good-bye to the long-legged bread
Scattered33 in the paths of his heels
For the salty birds fluttered and fed
And the tall grains foamed34 in their bills；
Always good-bye to the fires of the face，
For the crab-backed dead on the sea-bed rose
And scuttled35 over her eyes，
The blind， clawed stare is cold as sleet36.
The tempter under the eyelid37
Who shows to the selves asleep
Mast-high moon-white women naked
Walking in wishes and lovely for shame
Is dumb and gone with his flame of brides.
Susannah's drowned in the bearded stream
And no-one stirs at Sheba's side
But the hungry kings of the tides；
Sin who had a woman's shape
Sleeps till Silence blows on a cloud
And all the lifted waters walk and leap.
Lucifer that bird's dropping
Out of the sides of the north
Has melted away and is lost
Is always lost in her vaulted38 breath，
Venus lies star-struck in her wound
And the sensual ruins make
Seasons over the liquid world，
White springs in the dark.
Always good-bye， cried the voices through the shell，
Good-bye always， for the flesh is cast
And the fisherman winds his reel
With no more desire than a ghost.
Always good luck， praised the finned39 in the feather
Bird after dark and the laughing fish
As the sails drank up the hail of thunder
And the long-tailed lightning lit his catch.
The boat swims into the six-year weather，
A wind throws a shadow and it freezes fast.
See what the gold gut drags from under
Mountains and galleries to the crest40！
See what clings to hair and skull41
As the boat skims on with drinking wings！
The statues of great rain stand still，
And the flakes42 fall like hills.
Sing and strike his heavy haul
Toppling up the boatside in a snow of light！
His decks are drenched43 with miracles.
Oh miracle of fishes！ The long dead bite！
Out of the urn25 a size of a man
Out of the room the weight of his trouble
Out of the house that holds a town
In the continent of a fossil
One by one in dust and shawl，
Dry as echoes and insect-faced，
His fathers cling to the hand of the girl
And the dead hand leads the past，
Leads them as children and as air
On to the blindly tossing TOPs；
The centuries throw back their hair
And the old men sing from newborn lips：
Time is bearing another son.
Kill Time！ She turns in her pain！
The oak is felled in the acorn44
And the hawk45 in the egg kills the wren46.
He who blew the great fire in
And died on a hiss47 of flames
Or walked the earth in the evening
Counting the denials of the grains
Clings to her drifting hair， and climbs；
And he who taught their lips to sing
Weeps like the risen sun among
The liquid choirs48 of his tribes.
The rod bends low， pining land，
And through the sundered49 water crawls
A garden holding to her hand
With birds and animals
With men and women and waterfalls
Trees cool and dry in the whirlpool of ships
And stunned50 and still on the green， laid veil
Sand with legends in its virgin51 laps
And prophets loud on the burned dunes52；
Insects and valleys hold her thighs53 hard，
Times and places grip her breast bone，
She is breaking with seasons and clouds；
Round her trailed wrist fresh water weaves，
with moving fish and rounded stones
Up and down the greater waves
A separate river breathes and runs；
Strike and sing his catch of fields
For the surge is sown with barley54，
The cattle graze on the covered foam，
The hills have footed the waves away，
With wild sea fillies and soaking bridles55
With salty colts and gales56 in their limbs
All the horses of his haul of miracles
Gallop57 through the arched， green farms，
Trot58 and gallop with gulls59 upon them
And thunderbolts in their manes.
O Rome and Sodom To-morrow and London
The country tide is cobbled with towns
And steeples pierce the cloud on her shoulder
And the streets that the fisherman combed
When his long-legged flesh was a wind on fire
And his loin was a hunting flame
Coil from the thoroughfares of her hair
And terribly lead him home alive
Lead her prodigal60 home to his terror，
The furious ox-killing house of love.
Down， down， down， under the ground，
Under the floating villages，
Turns the moon-chained and water-wound
Metropolis61 of fishes，
There is nothing left of the sea but its sound，
Under the earth the loud sea walks，
In deathbeds of orchards62 the boat dies down
And the bait is drowned among hayricks，
Land， land， land， nothing remains63
Of the pacing， famous sea but its speech，
And into its talkative seven tombs
The anchor pes through the floors of a church.
Good-bye， good luck， struck the sun and the moon，
To the fisherman lost on the land.
He stands alone in the door of his home，
With his long-legged heart in his hand.
