The TITANIC


Secret in a woman's coat, her hat,
his face hidden by a veil, crazy
with fear and shame there among women
and children shivering in the boat,
he escaped huddled over an oar
on the cold and coldly misted sea.
His last sight was the deck awash and screaming.
Sick to the depths of his stomach,
he retched on the gray Newfoundland shore
and drowned in the bitter syncope.
Under a hovel roof, he woke
naked in a woman's arms and could
remember nothing, having become
what henceforth he would call himself.

One hundred fathoms down, withdrawn
from every future and larger than life,
with nothing left to lose or wish, the Titans
sit in their eternal afterglow
and with glorious instruments — 
curving, belled, and fluted, the fruits
of a golden age — blow upward,
in vast unison and bubbling serenity,
toward the solemn void, the dizzying precipice,
Nearer My God to Thee!

-published last in COLLECTED POEMS 1954-2004 (Schocken 2004)