---

Harold Hart Crane - O Carib Isle!
Work rating: Low

The tarantula rattling at the lily’s foot 
Across the feet of the dead, laid in white sand 
Near the coral beach—nor zigzag fiddle crabs 
Side-stilting from the path (that shift, subvert 
And anagrammatize your name)—No, nothing here 
Below the palsy that one eucalyptus lifts 
In wrinkled shadows—mourns. 

And yet suppose 
I count these nacreous frames of tropic death, 
Brutal necklaces of shells around each grave 
Squared off so carefully. Then 

To the white sand I may speak a name, fertile 
Albeit in a stranger tongue. Tree names, flower names 
Deliberate, gainsay death’s brittle crypt. Meanwhile 
The wind that knots itself in one great death— 
Coils and withdraws. So syllables want breath. 

But where is the Captain of this doubloon isle 
Without a turnstile? Who but catchword crabs 
Patrols the dry groins of the underbrush? 
What man, or What 
Is Commissioner of mildew throughout the ambushed senses? 
His Carib mathematics web the eyes’ baked lenses! 

Under the poinciana, of a noon or afternoon 
Let fiery blossoms clot the light, render my ghost 
Sieved upward, white and black along the air 
Until it meets the blue’s comedian host. 

Let not the pilgrim see himself again 
For slow evisceration bound like those huge terrapin 
Each daybreak on the wharf, their brine-caked eyes; 
—Spiked, overturned; such thunder in their strain! 
And clenched beaks coughing for the surge again! 

Slagged of the hurricane—I, cast within its flow, 
Congeal by afternoons here, satin and vacant. 
You have given me the shell, Satan,—carbonic amulet 
Sere of the sun exploded in the sea.
Source
The script ran 0.002 seconds.