These were your sighs,
your toss,
the listing yoke
of your shoulders.
... What spars,
blades, shafts,
rigging it took
to bear the weight of your journey.
Winds wore down the scoop
at the base of your throat.
The sun shed your sulk,
the mast of your frown.
It was bitter inside your mouth,
I remember,
and under the pelvic creascent
it was always night.
It’s wrong to cast a shadow,
to deepen the sun
and then send it away—
but worse to love
the truth and to follow it
on an ocean that’s blue,
that’s green,
that’s silver.
—Wendy Salinger, “The Eternal Boy,” from issue 84, Summer 1982.
your toss,
the listing yoke
of your shoulders.
... What spars,
blades, shafts,
rigging it took
to bear the weight of your journey.
Winds wore down the scoop
at the base of your throat.
The sun shed your sulk,
the mast of your frown.
It was bitter inside your mouth,
I remember,
and under the pelvic creascent
it was always night.
It’s wrong to cast a shadow,
to deepen the sun
and then send it away—
but worse to love
the truth and to follow it
on an ocean that’s blue,
that’s green,
that’s silver.
—Wendy Salinger, “The Eternal Boy,” from issue 84, Summer 1982.
Compliments of The Paris Review
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