en he looked at me I cursed him again,
That his eyes were soft as a woman's.

How long... since their last shell gouged our batteries?
How long... since we rose at aim with a sleuth moon astern?
(It was the damned green moon that nosed us out...
The moon that flushed our periscope till it shone like a silver flame...)

They loosed each man's right hand
As the galley spent on our decks...
And amazed and bloodied we reared half up
And fought askew with the left hand shackled...
But a zigzag fire leapt in our sockets
And knotted our thews like string...
Our thews grown stiff as a crooked spine that would not straighten...

How long... since our gauges fell
And the sea shoved us under?
It is dark... so dark...
Darkness presses hairy-hot
Where three make crowded company...
And the rank steel smells....
It is still... so still...
I seem to hear the wind
On the dimpled face of the water fathoms above...

It was still... so still... we three that were left alive
Stared in each other's faces...
But three make bitter company at one man's bread...
And our hate grew sharp and bright as the moon's edge in the water.

One grinned with his mouth awry from the long gapped teeth...
And one shivered and whined like a gull as the waves pawed us over...
But one struck with his hate in his hand...

After that I remember
Only the dead men's oars that flapped in the sea...
The dead men's oars that rattled and clicked like idiots' tongues.

It is still... so still, with the jargon of engines quiet.
We three awaiting the crunch of the sea
Reach our hands in the dark and touch each other's faces...
We three sheathing hate in our hearts...
But when hate shall have made its circuit,
Our bones will be loving company
Here in the sea's den...
And one whimpers and cries on his God
And one sits sullenly
But both draw away from me...
For I am the pyre their memories burn on...
Like black flames leaping
Our fiery gestures light the walled-in darkness of the sea...
The sea that kneels above us...
And makes no sign.

PALESTINE

Old plant of Asia--
Mutilated vine
Holding earth's leaping sap
In every stem and shoot
That lopped off, sprouts again--
Why should you seek a plateau walled about,
Whose garden is the world?

THE SONG

That day, in the slipping of torsos and straining flanks
on the bloodied o