Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE DOLPHIN, by PAUL FORT


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE DOLPHIN, by                    
First Line: Take me, o sea! I plunge. My suit do not contemn! Of metamor
Last Line: Attain the sun!
Subject(s): Death; Love; Sea; Dead, The; Ocean


Take me, O sea! I plunge. My suit do not contemn! Of metamorphosis you own the
magic spark? How happy I should be if, by a strategem, I went to join the troop
of supple dolphins dark. Lend me their breath, their eyes, like tropic waters
blue, that underneath your waves with sight undimmed can glide, and, that I may
disport with greater ease in you, of a voluptuous form the sleek and sinuous
hide.

I leap the waves, I toy with every foaming crest. But 'tis the tempest's surge
that crowns my heart's desire. In the hollow of its swell towards heaven's high
portals pressed, to slither back, enmeshed in flakes of humid fire! . . . The
storm still hangs aloof. I must await its call. Patient I'll be, O waves. My
live caresses thus you will repay again in that moment prodigal. And my white
breast shall be your mistress amorous.

On the surface now I swim, my skin with sunbeams bright. Like fronds of silver
wrack my furrow follows me. I abandon it and plunge and go to find the night.
But the sun's wheel still turns in depths of tossing sea. With the sun's wheel I
turn beneath the surges there, and reascend to day. I am here, my skin ashine.
Shivers of happiness make langorous my spine. The wave respires beneath. O, but
the sky is fair!

Sweet flying-fish that skim above my head demure, with vivid lightning-flares
you streak heaven's azure dome. Transparent o'er the bones I watch you go and
come. I have good eyes for you and sudden gapings sure. Snap! There are
pleasures rare in the sky and on the sea. Snap! Sweet and succulent fish! Snap!
Creatures small and bright, I am greedy for your flesh and 'tis felicity that in
my gulping you I also gulp the light.

The foam about me swirls, vibrant. I loll at ease. Blue, oblong bubbles dart.
Capsizing, waist in air, I give chase. O the big one there! I will have him. No,
he's gone. And on I undulate across the seven seas. -- A singing fills my ears.
To a sound my eyes are drawn. Spume spatters! A typhoon! I see it's rain. . . .
But no, 'tis a jetting whale. Too warm in ocean's tepid flow it spouts a cooling
drench while dreaming in the sun.

The shark disquiets me. Red-eyed and long of head, his lantern jaws convey I
know not what vile dread. A while we fly his track's tumultuous, cleaving surge.
Voracious, brutal force! 'Tis ended! I submerge. A glimmering coral-bush its
refuge offers me. I watch through waving fronds the Long-Head search the sea
with red and roving eye. Does he spy me? Neptune aid! The beast! He comes! The
beast! . . . No, it is but his shade.

O wood of flaccid weeds with oily tangles strong, where the pale light of day
escapes in tenuous shreds from the cradling summit reared so high above our
heads, how I love the calm, green sea beneath your branches long! With indolent
fins I swim your muffled waves among and ever as I move I feel the faint caress,
the gently-brushing touch where my white belly gleams, along my back, my sides,
and stroking every part, the subtle laziness of weedy fingers lean, of waves
soft langours steep, of rays in druid sleep, till tremblings somnolent,
prolonged within my heart, leave me suspended there enmeshed in lulling dreams.

The things I've always loved I now behold again: the splendour maritime of
morning's crimson birth, winds marine that everywhere bright-shimmering silks
upraise, the sweetness infinite of sunset in the bays, and the dishevelled robe
nocturnal of the crags; I see in the spray the gray reflections of the strands;
I dream of lunar seas, gold lands with harvests graced, and, vaguely glimpsed,
the huge blue billows of the earth, whence sometimes, sheaf-like, jags an
unexpected flame, uphurling blackened rocks in the blue sky laid waste: and my
heart is emulous of the unmounted main.

A flight of circling gulls my memory doth dower. Led by its scarf of moire the
whole day long I went. O delicate delight of vision when the shower falls from
its source divine, in silver palpitant, upon the torrid breast of the respiring
sun. Into what amorous dream has my rapt fancy gone, O dolphin? Skies of pearl,
clouds shot with carmine gleams, fair, fluttering butterflies about a perfumed
isle, waves whispering in dreams, wide evening's tranquil smile, green rocks
with pendulous weeds whence the ebbed ocean drips, a bright, full moon whose
light filters to oysters' lips; I feel the night approach with fluctuant shades
for guard; and see from the vaulting nave of the grotto myriad-starred that the
sky-line lifts and shuts at the blue zenith's height, stalactite-like descend
long rays of silver bright. A sudden clamour leaps from waves with tumult ta'en,
and my heart is emulous of the unmounted main.

Come, O my dream, behold to what ardour intimate doth palpitate and yield
Ocean's eternal flow. The current's tepid sheath to ribbands I have split.
Onward I fly upborne by madrepores aglow. Thou that synthesized all life,
obscure and mighty vat, to which the universe owes dolphins and their dreams, --
Life's heaving forces burst in phosphorescent streams within thy tide robust
where, luminous, I plunge. In deep abysms blue seethe primal growths of sponge.
Hill vertebrae upthrust crests perpendicular. What things I see! O gulfs! O my
distracted flight! All the soft azure swarm of medusas there respires. There,
wreathing emerald whorls, the giant mosses thrive. Was that heat-lightning's
flare, round the horizon swirled? This waste of golden sand is nothing but a
light . . . Here is death, and just beyond the whole of life astir. Black
quiverings of kelp above a crumbled world where a precipice's brow lets roam its
forest red. How much the ocean's bed is ruined and alive!

Let us plumb these depths profound, O my dream, for I would glut my eyes with
caverns rent by travailling earth. Full fain the craters I would see, pressed
close above their vent, distend their igneous throat to slake the whirlwind's
rut and shake the mountain-tops' gigantic porous chain. I know them well. But
the sea is jealous of their charms. More heavy let us be. More deep my vision
bends, searching. From secret caves a gentle light ascends. I see (the lesser
death through all my being goes), I have seen again these peaks upheaved by
cosmic throes. Ocean in them fulfills her savage destiny. It overruns the earth,
it lies with lava-floes. With all its vital force their sombre breasts it sows,
and myriad flaming mouths exude a froth of shell. With the hot fires of your
heart, volcanoes, burn the sea! The sparks are vitalized! How swift the fishes
dart! The bright sparks die. In this is all your task comprised? You draw the
dead who come, a never-ending train, in your eternal flux life's heart to find
again. O ashes, ashes, ashes. Sparks . . . in a little space coral and kelp have
hid that barren, craggy face, green jungles, swarming crabs and these devil-
fishes fair, invading Ocean's lair with rope-like amorous arms; the hippocampi
black your molten streams elude; blue holuthurias shine: thine is the labour
hard; the humble sludge is starred and patterned like the skies. Though one day
all this dies, the ashes you will guard. Imbibing death, the sea with
phosphorescence gleams. You breathe it and your fires already are renewed -- and
mounting sea-birds soar to the creative sun.

"If it is good to dream, then what should living be?" Within my dorsal fin this
thought has taken shape. Seized with gay vertigo it has awakened me. My tail
undulates. Ho! ho! A trembling thrills my nape. Where am I and with what do I
reel? O lovely eve! . . . Could I in the sea so long with dreams my senses
snare, when all its surface gray tumultuously doth heave? Fair is the storm, the
sky. The flying foam is fair. Behold the mighty surge that brings me happiness.
'Tis no tempest, truth to tell, but what is that to me! I leap in air, upborne
by the roaring billows' ire. Rain lacks, but I've the spray. My heart is mad
with glee. In the curve of vaulting waves towards heaven's high dome I press, to
slither back, enmeshed in flakes of humid fire. I would bite the lightning-flash
should it denounce me here to the injurious thunder-bolt. Ah, let me journey
free! How red I must appear beneath this copper sun! What madness prompted me to
make dim dreams my care? One must live. I am made for heaven, sea, and the space
between. I chase a gleaming wave made amorously bare. She blinds me all at once.
'Tis to make my bliss more keen. This other has a breast defaced with hydras
pale. Come on her back to see what wills the jealous one. For I adore them all.
Towards none my love shall fail. Gay, passionate, perverse alike I must possess,
and my white breast has found myriads of mistresses. How many do I make cry when
tempests roar above? As well enumerate the planets' grains of sand, for dolphin
never yet wearied of making love. Some are like stately trees that grow upon the
land, some like smooth columns are, and some like sirens fair, but which my
favorite is shall never be betrayed. I needs must go to scan the mighty sun,
austere, who holds high court a while ere gliding in the crowds of the majestic
stir and turning of the clouds. For that proud pilgrimage a road of gold is
made. I shall leap, or rather fly, from crest to crest, press on, heading the
dolphin troop through ambient seas of air, o'er all the waves of light till I
attain the sun!





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