The Ancient Modern
Can We Escape / Joshua Alan Sturgill
Can we escape into the sea?
Will our fires and our refuse follow us,
or will the spirits of the deep
respect the titles and rank
of our ancestors — long abandoned, long dead?
[Translate these words for me
into Basque, into Okinawan
— any tongue of the sea]
In the moments of clarity
which punctuate my life like prime numbers
(less frequent as they grow
more erratic and more unmanageable), I beg the sky
to carry a message to the sea on my behalf:
My love,
I am no longer wise enough
to entice you. I’ve breathed the barren earth,
and seldom is the night I see a star.
Sirius, I think, still dares to look on us
with pity. And I remember a battle
between tornadic Spring winds, which
left an hour clean of clouds. I saw seventeen
stars that night, when I couldn’t sleep and traveled
instead of dreaming.
My love, I drown in dreams. I feel
every thought is residue of a dream.
I cannot escape to you, because
I cannot outpace my imagination.
I can’t stoke desire enough
to burn away my idols. Near suffocation,
like a man with his mouth
barely above the sand. My recurring dream
about the sea: she reciprocates my desire.
She extends her dominion, reversing
the rivers’ polarity. Cafés closed,
hotels asleep, she rushes upstream through canyons
[Translate these verses for me
into a poetry of forms
the sea will understand]
and valleys and floodplains, sweeping secretly
by night through the falsity
of the city’s manicured riverfront.
Curbsides, the driveway, the foundation.
She takes me through an almost open window
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