I have to weep when I see it, the grown boy fretting
for a father dawdling among the isles
and the seascape hollowed out by that boy's edged gaze
to receive one speck, one only, for years and years withheld

and that speck, that curious man, has kept from home
till home would seem the forbidden place, till blood
and tears of an old woman must run down
to satisfy the genius of place. Even then, what
can they do together, father and son?
the driftwood stranger and the rooted boy
whose eyes will have nothing then to ask the sea

but all the time and everywhere
lies in ambush for the distracted eyeball
light: light on the ship racked up in port
the chimney-stones, the scar whiter than smoke
than her flanks, her hair, that true but aging bridge