Steven Schroeder | to know the sea...
To know the sea, Leibniz said, is to know
Every wave of which it is composed,
But to know a wave is not to know water.
No water photon excites the eye in a shard of sea,
No green, no blue in shattered sky,
In fractured light no color.
Calypso swimming knew water,
But sailing Odysseus never knew the sea.
Were the eye, Goethe said, not attuned to the sun,
The sun would never be seen by it.
Were the tongue not attuned to water,
The water would never be tasted
By it. And the body.
Were the body not attuned to water,
It would never be held
By it. No woman held Odysseus
No Calypso, no Penelope.
No. Cassandra turned the eye
To something of the sun.
Fire, not water,
Thirst, not home,
Sea, not woman,
Drank Odysseus.
We are nothing if light does not see us.
from rhino | 2001
