114
2015
NORTH CAROLINA L I T E R A R Y RE V I E W
The Seafarer’s Marriage BY JAMES APPLEWHITE
Bitter breast-cares have I abided—Ezra Pound
Weary with mere-ways and lacking a leman I turned my lust’s prow inland riding the breast-round swells toward anchor, nesting more sure than gull or gannet into cove of a grassy headland. Listing for cries of long ships in weather I strode the dry ground, aching for unused pleasure of manhood. Then the she I saw on upland meadow seemed fluttering flags to my eye. Her sheets caught wind like sails of long ships, filling my inmost longing. She I knew as the prize of all ages turned dainty in bonnet as tern’s wind hovering and my heart went out to her. Duly I joined the dance among jongleurs tasting apple from the roast pig’s mouth. Duly in wedding we gave ourselves hostage to the perils of love-troth. Nights we rolled in our ship-wrought bride bed, as billowed by pillows, we rode the Nor-West wind toward isles of the pagans and blest.
JAMES APPLEWHITE is Professor Emeritus of Duke University. His numerous honors include a National Endowment for the Arts Award, the Jean Stein Award in Poetry from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, the Associated Writing Programs Contemporary Poetry Prize, and the North Carolina Award in Literature. In 1995, he was elected to join the Fellowship of Southern Writers, and in 2014, his poem “Barbecue Service” was selected by former US poet laureate Billy Collins as one of the ten poems every North Carolinian should read. Read more about the poet, his work and his other honors in the preceding book review of his latest collection.
Beyond is the dim world’s end, where Odysseus conversed with the dreary death-wraiths. They crowded close, these many, murthired in manhood, girls blushingly budding cut off in blossoming, avid to the sacrifice, those of this house which avails only end-gloom. In dream I hailed him across the sea ages entreating drink of the ink-dark blood. Deep in spirit we heard from those throngs of this cloud-webbed coast, kings of old and their queenly lemans, warriors mighty of mold, grand against onslaught of ages. Bitterly I tasted the black sheep’s bleeding, hearing nones of my tribe and runes read aloud from the heart-written stone.
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