kent: But, true it is, from France there comes a power
Into this scattered kingdom . . .

– King Lear, 3.1.30–31

The waves today great polyhedrons.
Through abstractions the ship makes its way.
Here on deck the entire scene is metal
and painted gray on top of the metal’s gray.
Word ‘clad’ keeps bobbing up, coinage of
the Thirties. Cladding means the special bond
between two forms that one may dominate.

A thing like that is strong until it’s brittle.
I didn’t want to sit inside, depressing
to populate the bar that serves Cold War
cocktails, the Samizdat, Mauerfall,
Desirable Refugee. The smoking section
defies basic mental function but still,
nobody keeps you from nonsmoking.

Down the way some suits lock eyes to cross-
Channel solidarity, which in certain
anonymous styles (Eurovision)
will linger for one generation.
The carpet is an atrocity
already inviting nostalgia.
We survived this too. The hits were terrible.

The feeling’s concentrated in the lounge
that strangers to their senses have returned,
we’re drifting to safe harbor.
Desirable worldview. And then out here
the only way to cope with the fresh air
is going fetal on a yoga mat.
I’m aware of whispers among the crew.

The rucksack, which was Regan’s, produces
a lee that’s almost worse than nothing.
You do expect some sheltering effect.
Speaking English but wanting to be liked,
she patched it with a Canadian flag
that I’ve unstitched, not waiting to hear
what realm is thought uncomplicated now.

I travel under the banner of France
but he would be the first to call my home
nowhere, as if it’s printed on a map.
When I close my eyes the motion of the deck,
first up and then down and then up again,
can promise anything, these twenty miles
intermission.

I know we deserve to take England back.
I know a commercial passenger
ferry circa 1992
presents an imperfect vessel of attack.
I’m aware of whispers among the crew.
Anachronism makes all this possible:
a work that proceeds by digression

will be true only if its leaps are true,
while years of austerity place a cap
on the formal maneuvers available.
First up and then down and then up again.
If you need a renewable resource
then look in the direction of the sea.
It’s deep as feelings you didn’t know you had.

I often wonder why we go to fight.
Their words that night understandable.
I was the proud, puritanical child.
What if their anger’s appropriate
and it’s honest to envy their anger?
Anger’s like love, both insist on action
and feeling them forces you to choose.

I avoid this wherever possible.
France once looked at me and asked, How are you?
I’m doing my best, I said, not to know.
He didn’t seem to find that reassuring.
A story will make you its instrument
especially if you refuse your part.
I’m aware of whispers among the crew.

First up and then down and then up again.
It must be something I can use that English
wasn’t taught me by my mother. Crossing
the Channel first time in this direction,
my first time stalking like an animal
the people who were pressed to make these words,
I spend the journey curled up in a knot

not grasping my longing to be where
my home, a place contained in pencil lines,
each curve a skirmish, was scribbled over,
grammar pulled stone from stone generations
had arranged, while here in my own skin
the hunger for England grows and it is wild
that they will stamp my passport, let me in.

Despite the noise and the blast I slept
and had to be awoken for the sight
of land, which silenced everyone. On deck
all eyes now met as the long charcoal mark
of horizon crept up into white rock
that soon stretched all the way across the world,
a line almost legible, asking to be read,

refusing every hesitant translation.
By then I’d run to the bridge for France
who was busy giving instructions. They say
he undertakes this trip for his own sake
or maybe I just worry that they do.
No words are found equal to mixed feelings.
I’m aware of whispers among the crew.

Image © Tom Wachtel