Man overboard

I find myself, in my plush seat,
going farther and farther away,
sort of creatively visualizing

an epiphanic Frank Conroy-type moment
of my own, trying to see the hypnotist
and subjects and audience and ship

itself with the eyes of someone
not aboard, imagining the m. v. Nadir
right at this moment, all lit up

and steaming north, in the dark,
at night, with a strong west wind
pulling the moon backward through

a skein of clouds�the Nadir
a constellation, complexly aglow,
angelically white, festive, imperial.

Yes, this: it would look like
a floating palace to any poor soul
out here on the ocean at night, alone

in a dinghy, or not even in a dinghy
but simply and terribly floating,
treading water, out of sight of land.



From the final paragraph of David Foster Wallace's essay Shipping Out: On the (nearly lethal) comforts of a luxury cruise, Harper's Magazine, January 1996. Submitted by Dawn Corrigan.

Bombay

Look at the VT in the mornings for the rush of Bombay,
look at the black ocean at night for the hush of Bombay.

If you haven't been on the Evening Local from Bandra
to Virar, then you haven't yet felt the crush of Bombay.

You carry back the sea-gulls, the breakers, the waves,
you wear the sea like skin, feeling the brush of Bombay.

There was once "a tower whose top was in the heavens" like
Antilia, off Peddar Road: Bible warns The Plush of Bombay.

When his eyes met mine, the Local slowed down at Dadar,
the whole world halted, turned red in that blush of Bombay.

You would never, Akhil, like your kind before you, "leave the
streets of Delhi," then why like a lover, do you gush, of Bombay.

This is not fair, Bombay,

to get me in the habit of the sea, as if
you do not know, I am from and will go
back to my land-locked Delhi. Now the
next time I feel blue and all the world
comes crushing on to me, what do you
suppose I should do, with no sea, no
waves, no sand, no grey, wet boulders
on this calming edge-of-land, that tell you
the world's too big to carry on your shoulders,
so let it be, so let it be.

(thanks to Kyla Pasha)

Haji Ali

is like Bombay flying a kite in the sea,

and standing by its side,
- water, like creepers, grows
on stones - you see the high tide
happen under your feet.

This is the magic spot where
six hundred years before,
the saint's coffin, adrift, smooth
like ivory, white like bone,
came back from the Arabian sea.

This is the magic spot
where that couple from Borivali
meets, sits together;
the waves rise and come
to keep them,
but still, somehow, leave them
to themselves,
the rock dark-grey-wet
around them the world yet
they sit on noon-stone
- now ivory under the sea -
alone.