The Tenth Wave

THE TENTH WAVE The rain drops prick the skin of the sea Tumble with the urchins in the water, The black water, so heavy, tired-- Watching it tic tac toe in millions of tiny rings Tic tac toe, three by three by three Up until infinity-- As scores of seagulls watched from buoys Red sky at night, sailor's delight Isn't that how it goes? All hands on deck! All hands! Until then came, out of the night sky, a wind With the sound and fury of a thousand black horses Pummeling down on the water, the great, fearsome ocean And stirring it up like a bowl of soup All hands! The great boats all groaned in protest, Their wet, wooden bellies full Reeds choking shores uprooted and flew at the storm The whole world seemed to be feeding the storm, Which would not be satiated, but howled for more Chunks of earth, wood, sail, even human souls Would not appease such an appetite And then, in the pulse of three hours, a brief Quiet... ...an aching silence where the sun deceived them By shirking off the clouds for a moment Hear the call of the birds... Red sky at morning, at morning, at mourning It was then that the waves began-- Undulating at first, feel the water breathe, Soon rising, rising, black towers Into walls of water no one could scale, Ripping across the top in violent zig-zags White madness, the open mouth- -and they came, they came in rows As tall as nightmares, even hungrier than the wind And they ate up everything they touched, Swallowing lives, swallowing that which made them Pulling our dwarfed armies into the deep, deep Dark, black salt water Until then, after the herald, and the birds didn't sing anymore A tenth wave, which rose colossal over the rest, Moving like a lost city, Over the darkness, a shadow covering this world Silenced what was left to be silenced Little sailors Little sailors All sailor's songs end And On the Land Your little wives Will catch your songs on the wind Will pick up those songs on the winds