Sea Speech
Nothing said can be of much use,
but in a way perhaps
the clown knows or the Duke,
a pastime of sunken keys.
Look over this windy business,
then over this harbour deep with the frowns
of drowned men—which has more use?
But the pencil knock, the crabbed
foot of verse, the pinched gnarled tune,
like the tree growing up under the weather,
doesn’t it give somewhat to the men
of the drowned sea, what the sea
took from them, a speech of their own?