The seamen swing,
in fatigued, fevered relish of the cradling in infancy,
couched in their threadbare hammocks,
the ship plunges into the reshaping trough of waves
spooned towards the sandy dash with a green rumple
on the horizon, to fill in the blanks of an eager nation.

The cargo of half-starved humans shoved out
of the stinking darkness and clumped upon the deck
under the scorching sun that sucks in their sap
along with Pacific froth, the whip swishes
and crackles on their backs, spurting blood
whose trail might swell into rivers
through the camps of generations.

At times, the wind bellows with the burdening
cries from ill-fated voyages, creaking from the deep
and the zealous waves surge upon the deck,
spreading like a fine table linen, like the one
she was caught stealing for a loaf of bread –
she, the one with a swollen belly,
who is now retching over the railing,
bound by alert eyes; the fish thrashes,
scales in silvery judders of pain,
the sea-veined officers’ dead appetite whets
long after the last goose was slaughtered.

At this moment, under the stock of clouds
gashed by the dagger edges of stars,
who knows what lies when time slips
from the dungeon of these nights?
Whether the pestle-hard sailor bones
are crunched by the ravenous seas,
a tit-bit of history gulped by the rip of records
or whether the ship reaches the scrawl on the map,
its men hungrier than all the oceans, chomping off
limbs and trees and pillars of ornate shrines,
then belching in imperial pride.
Or whether it returns
like a comet, trailed by fiery threads
that had once sewed all lands together.

For now, the sea stretches under the rumbling sky,
months full of nights concealed in the darkness of depth,
uncounted days strewn as glimmering tips of waves.
Through a cargo stuffed with merciless germs,
unhinging hunger, roiling lust and homesick reveries,
a gale whistles, rattling the lids of craters.