My father kept a vaulted conch
By two bronze bookends of ships in sail,
And I listened its cold teeth seethed
With voices of that ambiguous sea
Old Böcklin missed, who held a shell
To hear the sea he could not hear.
What the seashell spoke to his inner ear
He knew, but no peasants know.

My father died, and when he died
He willed his books and shell away.
The books burned up, sea took the shell,
But I, I kept the voices he
Set in my ear, and in my eye
The sight of those blue, unseen waves
For which the ghost Böcklin grieves.
The peasants feast and multiply

And never need what I see.
In the Temple of Broken Stones, above
A worn curtain, rears the white head
Of a god or madman. Nobody knows
Which, or dares to ask. From him I have
Tomorrow's gossip and doldrums. So much
Is vision good for: like a persistant stitch
In the side , it nags, is tedious.