#sea fever

enchantedbook:

‘On the Open Sea’, 1921

Woodcut from La Petit Histoire Bretonne

Artist : Rene Quillivic

detailedart:

Oceanshades | By Frederick Judd Waugh(1861-1940)

eitamineira:

cadmusfly:

ALT

“Seamen have always dwelt on the fringes of settled society. The Greeks hesitated whether to count them among the living or the dead, and eighteenth century Englishmen were not so much better informed.”

Rodger, Nicholas AM. The wooden world: an anatomy of the Georgian navy. London: Collins, 1986.

Tangled hair in foam. Desolate skin. Breasts

beaten in waves. Where will my ghost shark go

when my lung start to fill? The sea’s conquests

shall all pass overhead while terrors flow

around. Listen: even darkness can blur

in the deepening depths. Without gravestone

or bones you won’t call me your ancestor.

Child of stars and storms. Child of a sea crone

and her fishwife. Orphan of all the drowned.

What good are husky-wet lips when you won’t

kiss them? Underflow: make me writhingly

grotesque, like the Sea’s fey or Brine’s hellhound.

Once I pressed to enter you. You said, “don’t.”

We stopped. My grave lays here: in memory.