The Idea Of Order At Key West

• She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
• The water never formed to mind or voice,
• Like a body wholly body, fluttering
• Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
• Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
• That was not ours although we understood,
• Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
•  
• The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
• The song and water were not medleyed sound
• Even if what she sang was what she heard,
• Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
• It may be that in all her phrases stirred
• The grinding water and the gasping wind;
• But it was she and not the sea we heard.
•  
• For she was the maker of the song she sang.
• The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
• Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
• Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
• It was the spirit that we sought and knew
• That we should ask this often as she sang.
•  
• If it was only the dark voice of the sea
• That rose, or even colored by many waves;
• If it was only the outer voice of sky
• And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
• However clear, it would have been deep air,
• The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
• Repeated in a summer without end
• And sound alone. But it was more than that,
• More even than her voice, and ours, among
• The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
• Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
• On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
• Of sky and sea.
• It was her voice that made
• The sky acutest at its vanishing.
• She measured to the hour its solitude.
• She was the single artificer of the world
• In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
• Whatever self it had, became the self
• That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
• As we beheld her striding there alone,
• Knew that there was never a world for her
• Except the one she sang and, singing, made.
•  
• Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
• Why, when the singing ended and we turned
• Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
• The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
• As the night descended, tilting in the air,
• Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
• Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
• Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.
•  
• Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
• The maker's rage to order words of sea
• Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
• And of ourselves and our origins,
• In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.