Hart Crane


Photograph of Hart Crane.

Voyages III

Infinite consanguinity it bears 
This tendered theme of you that light 
Retrieves from sea plains where the sky 
Resigns a breast that every wave enthrones; 
While ribboned water lanes I wind 
Are laved and scattered with no stroke 
Wide from your side, whereto this hour 
The sea lifts, also, reliquary hands. 

And so, admitted through black swollen gates 
That must arrest all distance otherwise, 
Past whirling pillars and lithe pediments, 
Light wrestling there incessantly with light, 
Star kissing star through wave on wave unto 
Your body rocking! 
and where death, if shed, 
Presumes no carnage, but this single change,- 
Upon the steep floor flung from dawn to dawn 
The silken skilled transmemberment of song; 

Permit me voyage, love, into your hands . .

John Ashbery

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