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of Moby-Dick, and for Bill
I wish to lay before you
a particular, plain statement
whose skeleton we are
briefly to exhibit
out of the trunk,
the branches grow, out of them,
the twigs
chased over the watery
moors, slaughtered
in the valleys oil, and bone
pass unscathed through the fire
and it is only
grey imperfect misty dawn
soon we shall be lost
in its unshored, harborless
immensities that serene
ocean rolled eastwards from me
a thousand leagues of blue and I only
am escaped alone to tell thee
only I am escaped to tell thee.
Sumita Chakraborty is Assistant Poetry Editor of AGNI. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in BOXCAR Poetry Review, White Whale Review, and Muddy River Poetry Review.
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