Shell-trash and gull-clutter
along the dirty curve
of Revere Beach.
A rough-tongued winter.
The Atlantic churns
its mass of liquid slate
with cold relentlessness.
The sixteen-year-old poet
carries a paperback book
at least twice his age.
A yellowing Oscar
Williams anthology.
He reads the words
of the self-drowned psalmist
of tropic voyages,
Marlovian hymnographer
of azure deeps and steeps.
The sea claimed you,
Hart Crane, as you
claimed the sea, scribe
of brined bones,
of doom and spume,
the merciless ocean’s
“bent foam and wave”
swallowing your song.