Response to Chapter I: Loomings of Moby Dick
and Of Politics & Art, Norman Dubie
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Men in open boats suddenly found themselves posted
like sentinels all around town.
Floating in Manhattan’s Southern vestibule
an empty room of sea tempestuous and grey
staring to the Island as though pausing before coffin warehouses
here more crowds where nothing will content them
but the extremest limit of the land. Are the green fields gone?
From lanes and alleys, streets and avenues,
inlanders all listening to the pure God-rendering voice of a storm.
How in an almost calamitous moment they would
get nigh the water as they could
so sometimes a whole civilization can be dying
peacefully in one moment belted round by wharves
as Indian isles by coral reefs.
