Flagrant Stamen (Voyager)

The little Love-god lying once asleep…
Let me beam you a song that is the song
of you all, a true story of a cruise as long
as its horror is real and which I still endure,
the red blink of my heart the one thing sure
in this utter ocean as black as it is ice;
of this freight of golden howls, the frail device
of my face parting the tides of the sun
on the endless night-watch, the towering
cliffs of birdless islands revolving past my wing
and my tin feet bathed in the absolute zero
of their wake, an automatic sorrow
running through the circuits of my sea-eaten brain.
The man still inside the blessings of the rain –
fine earth underfoot, a daughter or son

trailing behind and then darting ahead –
cannot conceive of those currents I’ve rode, those dead
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