Krakatoa

(CHARLES BAL, 1883)

August the twenty-second; from the rail
I saw what doubtless will prompt some to pray;
let those who want apocalypse be gratified.
But I will use my eyes. For if the sea's
turned white as mile, and if the sky's become
aurora-sheened like milk, each sober man
knows this occurred at seven p.m. in August,
that binnacle and sextant use no magic,
point towards no covens.
        The twenty-fifth:
raising Sunda Strait, the weather veined
with dazzling violence over Java Head,
I was prepared for theatre, as from ithe islands
rose huge smocks of ash, robes, I smiled,
of someone's fussing god. But that was fancy.
Fact the rain of dust and bread-hot pumice
breaking skylights, fact the leadsman's metal
hauled in warm from thirty chilly fathoms.

The twenty-sixth; I'll not say I'm not moved-
our northern heaven tumbling walls of steam
twenty miles high that swallow us
in fogs so dense a man cannot discern
the main yard. Anxious I am. But if prostration
fails me, if this is modern, I am not senseless
to catastrophe, merely its sacral
terror. We've shortened sail and head-reached clear
of Java. The wind's sulphurous.
            The twenty-seventh:
In hell mouth all night I've stood. I heard this morning
islands uproot themselves like teeth. Gauges
will jolt in Greenwich. Unnerving, not the cause
nor aftermath, but that shy charge that joins
the two- its instantaneous freedom. This
in scientific times might prove a power
worth worship. Tonight and placid, daylight sank,
a dazzling binnacle across the sea.