The meaning of the seas

Photo by Marius Fiskum on Unsplash

Undefeated these waves and tides

Through all the occupied centuries:

Sea-fogs hid Moorish boats shipping opal

To Byzantium while Frisian raiders

Looted every monastery south

Of Lindisfarne. People move from times

Of hunger to places of plenty across seas

Where membranes of wood and tattered sail

Lifted them towards the moon-blood

Of fertility and away from the torture

Of watching their children starve to death

On the rocky slopes of miss-begotten lands.

Tempest-seas, that death by water could not appease,

Flung the very gods of earth and air into the foaming seas

To drive poor sailors all the watery way to very heaven.