The Ages (Electronic book text)

A finalist for the National Poetry Series, "The Ages" is an ambitious historical sequence cast in a variety of forms and voices. Came an end to all that drowning depth, Came an end to the cemetery reaches, the zones, And all that abided was the sea that went out And came in again, and the sailor's moans. For there in that cathedral ingled-black, Pirates had chained the ones they had let live And now they were incidental to the harmony Of what is both ravenous and regurgative. O brilliant waters of the Sun of Death, You did not touch them; nor did the shark. They trembled like imbeciles in wonder Down, down, down in the darkest dark.