Poem
Gwyneth Lewis
SEA VIRUS
SEA VIRUS
SEA VIRUS
I knew I should never have gone belowbut I did, and the fug of bilges and wood
caught me aback. The sheets of my heart
snapped taut to breaking, as a gale
stronger than longing filled the sail
inside me. To be shot of land
and its wood smoke! To feel the keel
cold in a current! To see the mast
inscribing water like a restless pen
writing a fading wake! It’s true,
I’m ruined. Not even peace will do
to keep me ashore now. Not even you.
© 2007, Gwyneth Lewis
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Publisher: First published on PIW,
Gwyneth Lewis
(United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, 1959)
Gwyneth Lewis was Wales's inaugural National Poet from 2005-06, the first writer to be given the Welsh laureateship. She wrote the six-foot-high words on the front of Cardiff's Wales Millennium Centre, rumoured to be the largest poem in the world.
Poems
Poems of Gwyneth Lewis
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SEA VIRUS
I knew I should never have gone belowbut I did, and the fug of bilges and wood
caught me aback. The sheets of my heart
snapped taut to breaking, as a gale
stronger than longing filled the sail
inside me. To be shot of land
and its wood smoke! To feel the keel
cold in a current! To see the mast
inscribing water like a restless pen
writing a fading wake! It’s true,
I’m ruined. Not even peace will do
to keep me ashore now. Not even you.
SEA VIRUS
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