Stare at the sea, the sea is blind.
The sea gives back your theme—
The sea that is not like, that cannot lack
A thing
—you have heard this sea intoned
To every shock of chaos and of calm,
As though soul’s torn two intellects
Would marry in that hollow heave
The harm they cannot fatalize, the thing
A stonier dumb charm would weave
Out of its own locked raging tides:
The sea holds nothing it can hide.
Teach the sea to sing, the soul
To drink its own imagining.
Used with permission of Princeton University Press, from Corrupted into Song: The Complete Poems of Alvin Feinman, edited by Deborah Dorfman, 2016; permission conveyed through Copyright Clearance Center, Inc.