Water

Water
by Georgiana Bowley

Beneath the thrashing sea,
under dark, wild waves and lead moon,
down at the ocean floor,
pinned by weight,
crushed, coffined, pressed by centuries
of unrelenting gravity--here waits
the spot where all who dread must come.

Once, in desperate hope, some wanderer
built a marble shelter in this place,
a brittle building in the slithering current,
braving aeons of blind lichen motion--
a pearly temple, so deep as to be
opaque among the mists of moonsmoke.

Frail refuge, beckoning to doomed souls
whose fire of courage has all but extinguished,
whose hearts have gasped to know they are drowning,
deluged by the waters of death
(a bleak ferment,
mixed with equal parts of cruel compassion,
sparing none its law of feeling all,
and ecstasy that leaps from abject terror
of bondage to the ghastly tormenter).

Here sink those beaten in the last test,
too weak to flail against the powerful,
the wiser enemy that just had to beat them--
these vanquished ones drift down and crowd the walls,
and here lay down their tattered shreds of hope.

A mound of useless rags along the stone,
these remnants of past agony waft and curl,
sometimes drifting into jagged crevices
and settling there, forming a sort of skin--
transforming, through the bleak millenia,
a ghostly monolith,
the true alembic,
where the distillation can begin.

The veins, the crags of marble
hide the subtle light
we can only see
at midnight.