Discover.

Turner, Three Seascapes, 1827

A Muse of Water

We who must act as handmaidens   

To our own goddess, turn too fast,

Trip on our hems, to glimpse the muse   

Gliding below her lake or sea,   

Are left, long-staring after her,   

Narcissists by necessity;

Or water-carriers of our young

Till waters burst, and white streams flow   

Artesian, from the lifted breast:   

Cupbearers then, to tiny gods,   

Imperious table-pounders, who   

Are final arbiters of thirst.

Fasten the blouse, and mount the steps   

From kitchen taps to Royal Barge,   

Assume the trident, don the crown,   

Command the Water Music now   

That men bestow on Virgin Queens;   

Or goddessing above the waist,

Appear as swan on Thames or Charles   

Where iridescent foam conceals   

The paddle-stroke beneath the glide:   

Immortal feathers preened in poems!   

Not our true, intimate nature, stained   

By labor, and the casual tide.

Masters of civilization, you

Who moved to riverbank from cave,

Putting up tents, and deities,

Though every rivulet wander through   

The final, unpolluted glades

To cinder-bank and culvert-lip,

And all the pretty chatterers

Still round the pebbles as they pass

Lightly over their watercourse,

And even the calm rivers flow,

We have, while springs and skies renew,   

Dry wells, dead seas, and lingering drouth.

Water itself is not enough.

Harness her turbulence to work   

For man: fill his reflecting pools.   

Drained for his cofferdams, or stored   

In reservoirs for his personal use:   

Turn switches! Let the fountains play!

And yet these buccaneers still kneel   

Trembling at the water's verge:   

“Cool River-Goddess, sweet ravine,   

Spirit of pool and shade, inspire!”   

So he needs poultice for his flesh.   

So he needs water for his fire.

We rose in mists and died in clouds   

Or sank below the trammeled soil   

To silent conduits underground,   

Joining the blindfish, and the mole.   

A gleam of silver in the shale:   

Lost murmur! Subterranean moan!

So flows in dark caves, dries away,

What would have brimmed from bank to bank,   

Kissing the fields you turned to stone,

Under the boughs your axes broke.

And you blame streams for thinning out,   

plundered by man’s insatiate want?

Rejoice when a faint music rises   

Out of a brackish clump of weeds,   

Out of the marsh at ocean-side,   

Out of the oil-stained river’s gleam,   

By the long causeways and gray piers   

Your civilizing lusts have made.

Discover the deserted beach

Where ghosts of curlews safely wade:   

Here the warm shallows lave your feet   

Like tawny hair of magdalens.

Here, if you care, and lie full-length,   

Is water deep enough to drown.

Carolyn Kizer