[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

Doldrummed, a phantom ship heels,
in latitudes where horses drown.
It dips into a mirrored, silent sea
where nothing exists or reflects
other than intimations of facticity.
I am that phantom without traction.
My holds are swollen with ephemera,
knowledge banked without meaning.
Here, a crow-quill has inked a wake
with nothing plotted beyond the now.
Is any course taken then mine to make?

The sins of the father warp in time,
active and yet without momentum.
A disquiet exercised inside futility.
Nothing’s inside the mirror’s image
except time and increasing morbidity.
How much of me was made by me,
how much ordained by the weft of stars?
How much of my existence is reality?
Unhinged, the winds rise and flail,
we’re underway through a making sea.

Foul-hulled, sullen in surge and sway,
heavy, we heave, pitch, roll and yaw.
I am centred in this radial violence,
I can hold, but in this there is no mastery
there is only impending consequence.
I ask but there is no answer from the helm
I move at the whim of wind and water
yet my canvas will not muscle and fill.
It hangs salt-rimed, unbellied, limp,
like dead on the fence of an evening kill.

An albatross hangs below the bow,
swinging wild with suppliant wings,
an anchor for the sky, an absurdity.
Landfall is where the voyage ends,
where the earth waits hungering for me.
So, do I self-immolate as sacrifice,
sweet to heaven and cheating worms?
Will I burn bright on a clean sea breast
or, will I wait for the time that’s chosen
as I am chosen, driven to the west?