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First Line: Last week I talked to a sailor
Last Line: "and I answered -- ""poetry."" . . ."


Last week I talked to a sailor,
Who was young and wild and strong;
(Or, rather, he talked and I listened,)
For an hour, perhaps -- not long.
And Jens, whom I'd promised to marry
But an hour or two before --
Jens, who has lived all his stunted life
On a leaf-enshrouded shore,
Jens passed at a little distance,
And I knew that he frowned at me;
But I sat very still, and I listened,
While the sailor talked of the sea.

He used strange words that I do not know --
But I saw brown feet on alien sand;
His eyes were hot with the lure of quest --
And he said I could not understand --
But I saw wide spaces and flying spume,
And ships in the lone black nights;
I saw with a poignance almost pain
The passing of dim green lights:
I heard the wail of following gulls,
I felt the whip of the cold white fog,
And I saw a man in a dripping slicker
Bending over a log --

But I shall marry Jens, you know,
And live in a prairie town,
Where never a fog-horn blares in the morning,
And never a ship goes down --
Goes down to the sea with her singing crew.
With her anchors up, with her sails unfurled,
Where never a woman waits like stone
For a man on the rim of the world.
And he asked me, Jens, I mean, of course,
What the sailor said to me,
And what was the thing he talked about,
And I answered -- "poetry." . . .





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