one instant in one floating flower...

from my anthology of must read (a)merican poems

Hart Crane

from Voyages

II

—And yet this great wink of eternity,
Of rimless floods, unfettered leewardings,
Samite sheeted and processioned where
Her undinal vast belly moonward bends,
Laughing the wrapt inflections of our love;

Take this Sea, whose diapason knells
On scrolls of silver snowy sentences,
The sceptred terror of whose sessions rends
As her demeanors motion well or ill,
All but the pieties of lovers' hands.

And onward, as bells off San Salvador
Salute the crocus lustres of the stars,
In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—
Adagios of islands, O my Prodigal,
Complete the dark confessions her veins spell.

Mark how her turning shoulders wind the hours,
And hasten while her penniless rich palms
Pass superscription of bent foam and wave,—
Hasten, while they are true,—sleep, death, desire,
Close round one instant in one floating flower.

Bind us in time, O Seasons clear, and awe.
O minstrel galleons of Carib fire,
Bequeath us to no earthly shore until
Is answered in the vortex of our grave
The seal's wide spindrift gaze toward paradise.

*

There’s much in Crane’s poetry to perceive, love, emulate. For me, he’s clearly among the greatest of poets. His sense of music is breathtaking and commanding. From “At Melville’s Tomb” to The Bridge to “The Broken Tower,” his line is unmistakable and could not have been written by any other poet. To experience his poetry’s greatest potential, the lines must be heard as well as read. One simply cannot read Hart Crane silently.

“Voyages,” a marvelous love poem, is the closing suite to White Buildings, Crane’s first book. This second section – which functions well in the group or on its own – presents some of Crane’s most striking sea imagery:

rimless floods, unfettered leewardings

Her undinal vast belly moonward bends

On scrolls of silver snowy sentences

In these poinsettia meadows of her tides,—

The lines are brilliant in their showing off the poet’s absolute love of words – their meanings and sounds.

Crane’s vocabulary fuels a poem that is about risk and losing control. Note the word choices: unfettered, wrapt inflections, diapason, sceptered terror, rends, lovers’ hands, Prodigal, dark confessions, and bind. The word spell in the middle stanza has multiple meanings. Crane is playing on the ocean’s silver sentences, certainly, but he also wants to invoke spell as ecstasy – a word that aptly describes his poetic philosophy. He would drink himself into a state of wildness to create his poetry and a physical world for his body. With this in mind, spell must hold these two notions: a magical or intellectual trance and the moment of sexual abandon. Both are necessary for his words to find paper.

The beauty in “Voyages II” – “crocus lustres of the stars,” “Adagios of islands,” the “seal's wide spindrift gaze” – does, however, contain a darkness that is at the very center of Crane’s biography. The dark confessions, the penniless rich palms, one floating flower (perhaps the most disturbing image), and the grave’s vortex all share his inner chaos. It is a chaos – no doubt – but it produced such moving poetry. That’s part of Crane’s tragedy. Art – with a cost.

A paradise, but “no earthly shore.” It’s other worldly.