I wish you ...see the waves . . .fron the deck of Fang

[Michael Bailey]

So I take it WCW wasn't a big America's Cup fan... (all it takes is
$15 million and a dream, as Jeremy said on "Sports Night")
- and maybe not such a big fan of capitalism either!

strong poem, that - thanks, alice

On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 8:30 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> The Yachts
>
> contend in a sea which the land partly encloses
> shielding them from the too-heavy blows
> of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses
>
> tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows
> to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.
> Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute
>
> brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails
> they glide to the wind tossing green water
> from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls
>
> ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,
> making fast as they turn, lean far over and having
> caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.
>
> In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by
> lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering
> and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare
>
> as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace
> of all that in the mind is feckless, free and
> naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them
>
> is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling
> for some slightest flaw but fails completely.
> Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts
>
> move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they
> are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too
> well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.
>
> Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows.
> Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.
> It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair
>
> until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;
> the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies
> lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,
>
> beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up
> they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising
> in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.
>
>                William Carlos Williams
>



-- 
--- "Bearing in mind that either I don't know
or it'll be my ass if I tell you, what is it, man?" - Coy Harlingen