Galveston, 1961

[I have problems with rhyming poetry but I LOOVE it when it does it well, with grace, like this wonderful Richard Wilbur one. Also, he uses "flense," which is a spectacularly specific word meaning to strip the blubber from a whale. I love specificity in language so much.]



You who in crazy-lensed
Clear water fled your shape,
By choppy shallows flensed
And shaken like a cape,

Who gently butted down
Through weeds, and were unmade,
Piecemeal stirring your brown
Legs into stirred shade,

And rose, and with pastel
Coronas of your skin
Stained swell on glassy swell,
Letting them bear you in:

Now you have come to shore,
One woman and no other,
Sleek Panope no more,
Nor the vague sea our mother.

Shake out your spattering hair
And sprawl beside me here,
Sharing what we can share
Now that we are so near-

Small talk and speechless love,
Mine being all but dumb
That knows so little of
What goddess you become

And still half-seem to be,
Though close and clear you lie,
Whom droplets of the sea
Emboss and magnify.

[From The New Yorker]

Plus, now you can listen to this great "60s hit" and be so happy: