Circé

The cries of the shipwrecked enter my head.
On wildest nights when the torn sky confides
Its face on the sea's cracked mirror, my bed
- Addressed by the moon and her tutored tides -

Through brainstorm, through nightmare and ocean
Keeps me afloat. Shallows are my coven,
The comfortable margins - in this notion
I stand uncorrected by the sun even.

Out of the night husband after husband
- Eyes wide as oysters, arms full of driftwood -
Wades ashore and puts in at my island.
My necklaces of sea shells and sea weed,

My skirts of spindrift, sandals of flotsam
Catch the eye of the bridegroom for ever.
Quite forgetful of the widowing calm
My sailors wait through bad and good weather.

At first in rock pools I become their wife,
Under the dunes at last they lie with me -
These are the spring and neap tides of their life.
I have helped so many sailors off the sea,

And, counting no man among my losses,
I have made of my arms and my thighs last rooms
For the irretrievable and capsized -
I extend the sea, its idioms.