Poem by David St. John

ONDINE


Some nights I’d lie awake in my old
          attic bedroom

Listening to waves as they say crashing
          along the rocks of 

The breakwater their gathered lace unrolling 
          along the beach 
          
It wasn’t at all like a lullaby more some steady 
          crescendo of applause 

Escaping a Roman amphitheater or the echo
          of a brick wall collapsing 

Just after the wrecking ball or sometimes that 
          intimate gasp of 

Autumn leaves taking the match as you lean back 
          from the blaze                                               

& become a silhouette at dusk & those waves 
          held the sound 

Of an ending of the cruel repetition of an ending 
          as particular & pointless 
          
As the steady promise of the sea & one night 
          out walking in a silver air 

With the tide rising at my feet it was exactly 
         the sense of an ending 

I’d gone walking away from—away from the lights 
          of beach houses & boardwalk 

Until I found at last a stretch of black sand & water          
          & I thought the shape 

I saw there was only a twisted limb of driftwood
         tossed up by the sea 

Or a runaway in her sleeping bag or a familiar drunk 
          passed out in his bed of

Rank kelp but then it moved shaking a cascade of sand 
          out of its coiled mane 

& slipped off along the black dunes sliding soundlessly 
          into outstretched 
          
Fingers claiming back one its own & I saw immediately 
          this was something 
          
Not unlike providence although I didn’t yet recognize  
          this too was simply an

Ending in my life the way the cool perfume of opium hung 
          in the night air 

As with it came too her voice like the braided song of
          a dozen of the city’s sirens  

A song so brazen & intimate that I knew it was a song 
          I knew & one I had in fact

Always known     & to this one truth     to you     I’d swear

David St. John is the author of eleven collections of poetry, including his most recent book, The Last Troubadour: New and Selected Poems (Ecco). St. John is also the author of a volume of essays, interviews and reviews entitled Where the Angels Come Toward Us (1995) and is coeditor of American Hybrid: A Norton Anthology of New Poetry (2009). David St. John has written libretti for the opera, THE FACE, and for the choral symphony, THE SHORE. He is a chancellor of the Academy of American Poets and Chair of English at the University of Southern California.



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