IN MELVILLE'S HONOR

When in Polynesia
jumping ship
composing Typee
as if in amnesia
or in a dare
voyages wave you on
for worship to nature
in a far country
over the South Seas air,

You too it seems were
Ishmael in exile of land
who could turn tail
at the drop of God's hand
when he sees the whale
and all his dreams fail,

You were there
as a scrivener in an office
in the city world of business
you confess like Bartleby
when you cannot cope,

With Billy Budd on the ocean
may cry out for a kiss
instead of a rope
for Melville's novels
swim in words of abyss
yet metaphoric hope,

At first unappreciated
in his early diaries
full of conflicted religiosity
later biographies
he pleases Jesus
then skeptically curses
demeaning apocalyptically
all his own life's atrocities,

Now Melville hangs
in his sarcophagus coffin
interred in his darkness
of blasphemies,
who turned original sin
into as a fulfilled athiest
not on a whim,
but as discipline
from a Calvinist like this
in his chapter and verse
sang his own miracle hymn,

We still desire to visit you
often thrilled by
this poet's profound way
of expressing our despair
smitten by your travel fire
on a journey to get away
yet your oracles and curse
do not soften us to this day
as we tarry here.