You can blow out a candle
But you can’t blow out a fire
Once the flames begin to catch
The wind will blow it higher
Oh Biko, Biko, because Biko
Yihla Moja, Yihla Moja

-The man is dead
And the eyes of the world are
watching now
watching now

—Peter Gabriel

l. albatross

above this grave of whale,
above this grace they navigate
no further than their sails.

inveigh their arcane arrogate
below a sky the clouds amuse,
no greater than this wind.

in all their hymns, a herring &
yet these piebald stones remain
provender to their beck & call

motes unfit
for leading lines or drama:
this mettlesome they buffet
against each curve,
each printless wave,
against the sand, the sea

as if expanses limitless
exist to give their offspring homes
as if they own the shore.

ll. seashell

at night these ebbs breathe out
then in, as if their patience spills
a sigh upon the habitué
a song among the denizen

all things seashell

& yet

tonight the tide leaves broken
inside a curl without a word. remains.

where were you then
between the hours
this timeless supposititious
shedding cosmos through the stars
into the sun, these lessons.

what aegis failed — seashell,
where were you then,

today?

lll. stones

a cairn sits, pervicacious,
almost as if a chrysalis
against adumbrate secrets,
too fatuous to mourn the spates:

that tête-à-tête of breeze & sea
which manifests concentric storms
then spirals on
until an explicate withdraws;
until its lost position.

verisimilitude, perhaps
for some, all edges lie in; wait
like stairways piled into the light
& some of us: too tired to crawl
might scuttle to their harbor
where barnacles embrace the kelp

as if we crave some velvet touch,
as if our eyes bleed salt.

lV. sand

these hands:
these tools that build with blocks
with wood,
these hands which fashion castles
would bind you in imprison, form,
as if arm’s art might expiate
this whispering relentless.

& still your heterogeneous slips
through hoary hours, the infinite
inside these eyes, this glass
erasing each impression
each foolish view confute inspires
before it slides homogenous
into the dawn; a day.

V. waves

back & forth you come & go;
such splendid concatenation
suspended in surcease — begin
with vagary, unmatched.

so boldly supercilious
fortuitous, it mostly seems
as if these tides can swell a man
into a moon, a God
then tumble him peremptory
into a weed, a cell

each single sui generis
robustious surges in a babe,

in frothy whips — in tongues
into this place; this life
before you crash them chary
against recede’s renege.

returning them as trophies, shells
which sing of things the eyes eschew
an animus beyond these wades
through hollowness & promises
more magic than their bones.

they say it has to be,
seashell,
but I do not believe.