Oh no, no, no, Ive shed my ship, the good ship Why, and Ive clung like limpets to my new hard bed the raft and now how can I leave, to go spinning down into the forests of the sea like a sick bird. But if I found a rock or an islet? Silly, there are no rocks or isles or islands or ports of call in the middle of the wide Atlantic sea here at 45 degrees on the Equator. But the raft is breaking up. It breaks. There were only ordinary sea ropes to fasten the balsa poles side by side and across and through, and what ropes could I ever find that could hold this clumsy collection of cross rafters steady in this sea? Its a storm. Its a typhoon. The sky is thunder black and with a sick yellowish white at the clouds edge and the waves are blue Stephens black and higher than the church tower and all the world is wet and cold and my ears are singing like the ague. And there goes my raft, splitting apart under me like bits of straw in the eddy of a kitchen gutter. There it goes, and Im afloat, reaching out for straws or even a fishbone. Im all awash and drowning and Im cold, oh I am so cold, Im cold where all my own inside vital warmth should be held, there along my spine and in my belly but there it is cold cold as the moon. Down and down, but the corky sea upsends me to the light again, and there under my hand is rock, a port in the storm, a little peaking black rock that no main mariner has struck before me, nor map ever charted, just a single black basalt rock, which is the uppermost tip of a great mountain a mile or two high, whose lower slopes are all great swaying forests through which the sea buffalo herd and graze. And here Ill cling until the storm goes and the light comes clear again. Here at last I can stay still, the rock is still, having thrust up from the ocean floor a million years ago and quite used to staking its claim and holding fast in the Atlantic gales. Here is a long cleft in the rock, a hollow, and in here Ill fit myself till morning. Oh now Im a land creature again, and entitled to a sleep steady and easy. I and the rock which is a mountains tip are solid together and now it is the sea that moves and pours. Steady now. Still. The storm has gone and the sun is out on a flat calm solid sea with its surface gently rocking and not flying about all over the place as if the ocean wanted to dash itself to pieces. A hot singing salty sea, pouring Westwards past me to the Indies next stop, but pouring past me, fast on my rock. Fast Asleep. Fast. Asleep.
NURSE:
Wake up. Wake up theres a dear. Come on,
no
thats it. Sit up, all right Im holding you.
PATIENT:
Why? What for?
NURSE:
You must have something to eat. All right you can go back to sleep in a minute. But you certainly can sleep, cant you?
PATIENT:
Why make me sleep if you keep waking me up?
NURSE:
You arent really supposed to be sleeping quite so much. You are supposed to be relaxed and quiet, but you do sleep.
PATIENT:
Who supposes? Who gave me the pills?
NURSE:
Yes but well never mind. Drink this.
PATIENT:
Thats foul.
NURSE:
Its soup. Good hot soup.
PATIENT:
Let me alone. You give me pills and then you keep waking me up.
NURSE:
Keep waking you? I dont. Its like trying to wake a rock. Are you warm?
PATIENT:
The suns out, the sun
Who has not lain hollowed in hot rock,
Leaned to the loose and lazy sound of water,
Sunk into sound as one who hears the boom
Of tides pouring in a shell, or blood
Along the inner caverns of the flesh,
Yet clinging like sinking man to sight of sun, Clinging to distant sun or voices calling?
NURSE:
A little more, please.
PATIENT:
Im not hungry. Ive learned to breathe water. Its full of plankton you know. You can feed your lungs as you feed your stomach.
NURSE:
Is that so dear? Well, dont go too far with it, youll have to breathe air again.
PATIENT:
Im breathing air
now
Im on the rock you see.
See him then as the bird might see
Who rocks like pinioned ship on warm rough air,
Coming from windspaced fields to ocean swells
That rearing fling gigantic mass on mass
Patient and slow against the stubborn land,
Striving to achieve what strange reversal
Of that monstrous birth when through long ages
Labouring, appeared a weed-stained limb,
A head, at last the body of the land,
Fretted and worn for ever by a mothering sea
A jealous sea that loves her ancient pain.
NURSE:
Why dont you go and sit for a bit in the day room? Arent you tired of being in bed all the time?
PATIENT:
A jealousy that loves. Her pain.
NURSE:
Have you got a pain? Where?
PATIENT:
Not me. You. Jealously loving and nursing pain.
NURSE:
I havent got a pain I assure you.
PATIENT:
He floats on lazy wings down miles of foam,
And there, below, the small spreadeagled shape
Clinging to black rock like drowning man,
Who feels the great bird overhead and knows
That he may keep no voices, wings or winds
Who follows hypnotised down glassy gulfs,
His roaring ears extinguished by the flood.
NURSE:
Take these pills dear, thats it.
PATIENT:
Who has not sunk as drowned man sinks,
Through sunshot layers where still the under-curve
Of lolling wave holds light like light in glass,
Where still a jewelled fish slides by like bird,
And then the middle depths where all is dim
Diffusing light like depths of forest floor.
He falls, he falls, past apprehensive arms
And spiny jaws and treacherous pools of death,
Till finally he rests on ocean bed.
Here rocks are tufted with lit fern, and fish
Swim shimmering phosphorescent through the weed,
And shoals of light float blinking past like eyes,
Here all the curious logic of the night.
Is this sweet drowned woman floating in her hair?
The sea-lice hop on pale rock scalp like toads.
And this a gleam of opalescent flesh?
The great valves shut like white doors folding close.
And then the middle depths where all is dim
Diffusing light like depths of forest floor.
He falls, he falls, past apprehensive arms
And spiny jaws and treacherous pools of death,
Till finally he rests on ocean bed.
Here rocks are tufted with lit fern, and fish
Swim shimmering phosphorescent through the weed,
And shoals of light float blinking past like eyes,
Here all the curious logic of the night.
Is this sweet drowned woman floating in her hair?
The sea-lice hop on pale rock scalp like toads.
And this a gleam of opalescent flesh?
The great valves shut like white doors folding close.
Stretching and quavering like the face of one
Enhanced through chloroform, the smiling face
Of her long half-forgotten, her once loved,
Rises like thin moon through watery swathes,
And passes wall-eyed as the long dead moon.
He is armed with the indifference of deep-sea sleep
And floats immune through searoots fed with flesh,
Where skeletons are bunched against cave roofs
Like swarms of bleaching spiders quivering,
While crouching engines crusted with pale weed,
Their shafts and pistons rocking through the green
NURSE:
Now do come on dear. Oh dear, you are upset, arent you? Everybody has bad times, every one gets upset from time to time. I do myself. Think of it like that.
PATIENT:
Not everyone has known these depths
The black uncalculated wells of sea,
Where any gleam of day dies far above,
And stagnant water slow and thick and foul
NURSE:
Its no good spitting your pills out.
PATIENT:
Foul, fouled, fouling, all fouled up
NURSE:
One big swallow, that will do it, thats done it.
PATIENT:
You wake me and you sleep me. You wake me and then you push me under. Ill wake up now. I want to wake.
NURSE:
Sit up then.
PATIENT:
But what is this stuff, what are these pills, how can I wake when you who is that man who pushes me under, who makes me sink as drowned man sinks and
NURSE:
Doctor X thinks this treatment will do you good.
PATIENT:
Wheres the other, the fighting man?
NURSE:
If you mean Doctor Y, hell be back soon.
PATIENT:
I must come up from the seas floor. I must brave the surface of the sea, storms or no, because They will never find me down there. Bad enough to expect Them to come into our heavy air, all smoky and fouled as it is, but to expect them down at the bottom of the sea with all the drowned ships, no thats not reasonable. No I must come up and give them a chance to see me there, hollowed in hot rock.
NURSE:
Yes, well, all right. But dont thrash about like that for goodness sake.
PATIENT:
Goodness is another thing. I must wake up. I must. I must keep watch. Or Ill never get out and away.
NURSE:
Well I dont know really. Perhaps that treatment isnt right for you? But youd better lie down
then. Thats right. Turn over. Curl up. There. Hush. Hushhhhhhh. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
PATIENT
:
Hushabye baby
lulled by the storm
if you dont harm her
shell do you no harm
Ive been robbed of sense. Ive been made without resource. I have become inflexible in a flux. When I was on the Good Ship Lollipop, I was held there by wind and sea. When I was on the raft, there was nobody there but me. On this rock Im fast. Held. I cant do more than hold on. And wait. Or plunge like a diver to the ocean floor where it is as dark as a fishs gut and theres nowhere to go but up. But I do have an alternative, yes. I can beg a lift cant I? cling on to the coattails of a bird or a fish. If dogs are the friends of man, what are a sailors friends? Porpoises. They love us. Like to like they say, though when has a porpoise killed a man, and we have killed so many and for curiosity, not even for foods or killings sake. A porpoise will take me to my love. A sleek-backed singing shiny black porpoise with loving eyes and a long whistlers beak. Hold on there porpoise, poor porpoise in your poisoned sea, filled with stinking effluent from the bowels of man, and waste from the murderous mind of man, dont die yet, hold on, hold me, and take me out of this frozen grinding Northern circuit down and across into the tender Southern-running current and the longed-for shores. There now. Undersea if you have to, I can breathe wet if I must, but above sea if you can, in case I may hail a passing friend who has taken the shape of a shaft of fire or a dapple of light. There, porpoise, am I true weight? A kind creature? Kith and Kind? Just take me South, lead me to the warmer current, oh now it is rough, we toss and heave as it was in the Great Storm, when my raft fell apart like straw, but I know now this is a good cross patch, it is creative, oh what a frightful stress, what a strain, and now out, yes out, were well out, and still swimming West, but South West, but anti-clock Wise, whereas before it was West with the clock and no destination but the West Indies and Florida and past the Sargasso Sea and the Gulf Stream and the West Wind Drift and the Canaries Current and around and around and around and around but now, oh porpoise, on this delicate soap bubble our earth, spinning all blue and green and iridescent, where Northwards air and water swirl in times direction left to right, great spirals of breath and light and water, now oh porpoise, singing friend, we are on the other track, and Ill hold on, Ill clasp and clutch to the last breath of your patience, being patient, till you land me on that beach at last, for oh porpoise, you must be sure and take me there, you must land me fairly at last, you must not let me cycle South too far, dragging in the Brazil current of my mind, no, but let me gently step off your slippery back on to the silver sand of the Brazilian coast where, lifting your eyes, rise the blue and green heights of the Brazilian Highlands. There, there, is my true destination and my love, so, purpose, be sure to hold your course.