Mornings
before the sun’s liquid
spilled gradually, flooding
the island’s cool cellar,
there was the boat
and the still lagoons,
the sound of my oars
the only intrusion
over cries of birds
in the marshy shallows,
loud crashing of the startled crane
rushing into air.
And in one strange,
dark, tree-hung entrance,
I followed the sound
of my heart all the way
to the reed-blocked ending,
with the pads of the lily,
thick as green-shining film,
covering the water.
And in another
where the sun filtered in
to probe the depths
through a lattice of branches,
I saw the skeletons
of brown ships rotting
far below in their unmarked
unknown burial ground,
wondering what strange fish
with what strange colours
swam through these palaces....
A small boy
in a flat-bottomed punt
and an old pair of oars,
moving with wonder
through the antechamber
of a slowly waking world.
Raymond Souster, “Lagoons, Hanlan’s Point” from Collected Poems of Raymond Souster, Volume 1, 1940–1955 (Oberon Press, 1980). Reprinted by permission of Oberon Press.