Reaching For Sea-Madness

In a high still tower they caged her, 
On a cliff above the sounding sea,
When they found the whirling winds enraged her
And the sea spoke merfolk poetry,
Murmuring in her ear all hours of the day.
At first her sobbing was soft and low,
But as the sea-madness stole her soul away,
Her sobbing into wailing began to grow,

Until she would loose unearthly screams
At all who loved her, or came near:
"The sea is singing in my dreams!
Will you not listen? Will you not hear?
The moondark is walking on the waves
Clad in robe of blackest, richest samite;
The last lingering siren-song there braves
The founts and fires and dark and light."

Which was very pretty, but made no sense.
But then she began digging at the dike,
Which alone, that earthen wall and fence,
Prevented the kingdoms from drowning or the like.
Seeing her madness endangered others,
They shut her up then, in that high tower,
Her parents, her sister, and her brothers,
Saying that no others had the power.

And in time her endless round of screaming
Grew accepted, like the seagulls' keen.
They grew used to her hair, streaming,
Strummed by the wind's fingers strong and lean,
As she leaned out of an arrow slit.
They grew to accept it, think it no more
Than the shells that on their mantle sit,
Or the strange seaweeds the tide will bear to shore.

But I am one who has looked at shells,
And felt a distant song come sweeping.
At the sight of driftwood, each eye wells
Until I am helpless, hopeless, weeping.
I stand and look out at the heaving sea,
And feel a mad love, and a madder desire
To run to the waves, let them embrace me,
And carry me far from home hearth and fire.

So I went to the tower one night;
With a crowbar in my hand I forced the door.
They used to post guards there to fight
Anyone who might free her; not anymore.
They thought her safe, with her screams flying
Around their heads like spray off the sea.
They did not know that her soul was dying,
Or that she would not harm them were she free.

I opened the door, and saw her standing there,
By the first arrow slit, the cold moonlight
Crowning her, touching with frost her hair.
She turned eyes as dark green as sea-midnight
Upon me, and I saw that spray was on her face.
Or was that brine but the mark of tears?
She moved towards me with a mermaid's grace,
And I quelled my sorrow and my fears.

I stood aside, and she moved to the door,
Stood there one moment, head back, swaying.
Then she burst free, running down the shore,
To where the waves dashed down in their playing.
She sprang; I saw the flutter of her gown,
White gauze lit by a flash of the moon.
Then to the sea she went, down and down.
There came a fragment of unearthly tune.

And so I sit here, in my cell, awaiting
The trial they say I will surely endure.
They wonder what madness took me, hating
The tower that kept her safe and sure,
And released her to go to sea and drown.
They found her body the next morning,
Blood on her head in place of the foam-crown.
I hear the sea-bell's tolling warning.

The waves are rising in a storm. I stand,
And move to the one window of my cell.
They gave me one that looks upon the sand,
And they gave me, to hold, one white shell.
They tried to keep me from the ocean,
But I screamed, tormented by such nightmares
That they muttered of my strange devotion,
And put me in the path of the spray and sea-airs.

I stare. The spray surges and sings madly,
And I see a rising wave, an aqua mountain,
Rising over us. I cry out once and gladly,
And then the wall showers down like a fountain,
And I am free to run over the sand as she
Did on the night I can never regret.
I am a wave, a drop, a gull; I am free,
And my hair and my cheeks are wet.

I turn in time to see the kingdom drown
Beneath the clamor of the onrushing wave.
They scream as they fail and go down.
But these screams no sea-madness will save.
I turn, and then with what swelling emotion
See her there, reaching out a hand to me.
I take her hand, and we enter the ocean,
Singing the madness of the roaring sea.