If you wait too long by the primordial sea
Your hair will catch the silver of the waves
Your face will reflect the iridescent sunset,
Your hands will sift the primeval seabed sand
You will look for coral eyes, bleached bones, ragged claws,
Your memory will unearth Gallic and Hellenic battles,
Sunken ships, lovers gone, heroes dead and treasures lost,
Your friends will vanish one by one like Ulysses,
You will seek the company of reclusive mermaids
And weave your tales in their gossamer hair,
And once in a while if you capture Cyclops
Your eyes will undergo a sea change
And your psyche will transmogrify
Into those of a grotesque alien
And then you might employ the language
Of Shakespeare and Hemingway
To stem the flow of time,
To destroy phantasmagoria, chronology, history,
Romanticism and imagination and
Create a new figural realism.
