53. ISLAND STORY

The dull oak by its trembling leaves
dreams the acorns' bounding gonadity.
Drunk on sunlight, we climb the mast.
We scan, tattered, for passing virgins.
The horizon, however, has shrunk;
all is but a dream, a prayer,
the reenactment is a resignation.
A strong, narrow-eyed youth climbed the oak.
He saw the ship and sailed.
Later as a young man he fell captive to love
     in a Berber queendom. A vengeant king
soon came and slew the youth.
Ever after, a quiet man with troubled eyes
     paces the island's tropic rim.
     With binoculars he scans the mainland.
The youth's grave is but
     a shallow plot of turned earth
     and the leaves shake, rattling, over it,
     the man visits it often.
The king's spear lies gross and green
in the ocean rim.
Sea horses dance in the boiling waters,
     conches sleep on the deep highways;
No virgin waves in the misty distance.