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On the horizon a beautiful storm calls my name
which rises and falls in capricious waters of ire.

So upon myself a voyage outset, upon to a schooner's mast myself I moored,
against acclivities, of whose waves a ululation of wishes washed ashore,
doomed a century’s wander ‘cross osseous sands and crux devoid of sward -
that craggy purlieu, for élan vital who forsook Charon’s dowry.
For the ferryman is no master of ocean flue eddy.

I chase a beast which devoureth the world.
Whom breaketh all walls and weapons.
and whom breaketh my spirit in castigation.

Whose voice trembled and broke,
a crack of thunder, breaking of rock,
upon a frock hirsute with scorpion sting;
cast-up forecastle sea wash 
tempest wind and windswept.

And my hapless heart, strewn athwart with caulk,
fell helpless to the perfid promises of yesteryear,
perjuring of me sense and sensibility…

Herein the midst of callow middle life,
I skittle through doldrums where no wind touches sail;
I a mad captain in my pursuit of fame, fortune, and shallow desire,
on my sinking Pequod in purgatory, on a chase of dolorous fancy in Eros' mire.

So sweep me away in the current,
for I no longer exist:
a sailor lost amidst ocean spray and lighthouse mist…

On occasion in later life,
a nocturne for my ears, a deafening fill,
a wisp whisper rasp and frill,
I hear that call; I hear it still.

© Giuseppe Gillespie – October 2023

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*Some notes on terms and usage:

Schooner – A schooner is a small sailing boat, and a possible passphrase in the Wind Waker 😉

Élan Vital – Life force (French)

‘…century’s wander… Charon’s dowry’ – In ancient Greek myth, Charon is the ferryman of the rivers Acheron and Styx which separate the realms of the living and dead. Souls who couldn’t pay the price of crossing were sentenced to walk the shores of Styx for a hundred years (Aeneid, Virgil).

‘…beast which devoureth the world; whom breaketh all walls and weapons…’ – this is a play on Dante’s Inferno, Canto 17:

“Behold the monster with the pointed tail,

Who cleaves the hills, and breaketh walls and weapons,

Behold him who infecteth all the world.”

The monster alluded to here is a figure from Greek mythology, Geryon. In Inferno, Geryon is a massive winged beast with the tail of a scorpion, body of a dragon, claws, and the face of an honest man; he represents hell’s 8th circle: fraud.

‘…sinking Pequod…’ – the name of the ship from Herman Melville’s Moby Dick.

Vocabulary

Capricious – unpredictable, unsettled

Acclivities – upward slope

Ululation – high whining

Osseous – bone-like

Crux – usually means a puzzling problem; however, the original Latin meaning was an instrument of torture

Sward – grassy surface

Eddy – flow

Castigation – harsh criticism

Hirsute – hairy

Athwart – an old way of saying across

Perfid – treacherous

Perjuring – essentially to lie to yourself, a deliberate breach of trust or to make guilty of

Callow – young, inexperienced

Doldrums – region of ocean near the equator where there is not much wind

Dolorous – full of grief

Eros – Greek god of love