At sea #1

-

Silver and copper chariots——

Steel and silver ship's bows——

Hammer the foam,——

Heave up stumps of brambles.

——The currents of the heath,

And the huge ruts of the ebb tide

Swirl toward the east,

Toward the pillars of the forest,——

Toward the timbers of the pier,

Whose angle is struck by whirlpools of light.

--Arthur Rimbaud, Seascape, from John Ashbery's new translation of Illuminations (Carcanet, 2011), p. 109.