The Perfection of Duty

[haleine]

At work in the Customs House
we have trophies of the sea:
a lost chronometer, ship's wheel,
a floating compass and even
a siren figurehead; our little sky
is hung with safety nets,
dry wrack and shells,
such as the sea has left us.

For my part, I observe
the inward and outward
traffic of goods,
and enter it all
in my ledger.

When I am restless, I follow
the ways of ships on charts,
plotting out my fever, seeking
always some greater excision.

Somewhere, pirates cut their course,
And we scour the bay each day with the glass.

But there are the only the merchants, rounding
the bobbing of the channel buoys,
calmly giving their toll,

and our flagship,
the lightship,
stuck fast on the bar.

[David]

What a lovely title, haleine.

S1 reminded me of the poem by Horace (was it?) that Milton translated. I don't mind being reminded of that at all.

I couldn't quite follow "seeking / always some greater excision."

The ending made me feel that you were reaching for some greater, possibly transcendent meaning, but it didn't come through to me.

However, I enjoyed it as it is. I'd say you were about three quarters of the way to a good poem.

Nice to have you posting. If you feel so inclined, you can introduce yourself over at Hello, Good Evening and Welcome. I'm sure we'll give you a lusty greeting.

Cheers

David

[Elphin]

Indeed a pleasing and interesting first post.

I like particularly

our little sky
is hung with safety nets,
dry wrack and shells,
such as the sea has left us

If I could offer a crit it would be that I found the line beaks uneven, for example

a floating compass and even seems to leave even hanging

and I wonderd why the transition to short lines in s2.

But yes a bit of polish would make this a really good un

elph

[stuartryder]

Hi Haleine. I can add my thumbs-up too.

I thought the first half was definitely better as it seemed to bring out the seafaring very vividly. The second half was a nice way to balance it but I suspect you want more of an ending than just the balance. Perhaps try to get a couple of killer lines in at the end?

Cheers

Stuart

[ray miller]

I like it, particularly the first stanza, which is very full and ends nicely with "such as the sea has left us". I think it flounders a bit round about 4th and 5th stanza but "stuck fast on the bar" concludes with some aplomb. I enjoyed the measured tone throughout. Like someone else I didn't understand excision.

[Helen Bywater]

Hi Haleine,

I also like this a lot - perfect title, great first stanza. I didn't get "excision" either - I almost wondered if it was a typo for "excursion", which would work.

Helen

[Mic]

There is so much to appreciate in this. The title for starters. I do like the idea of 'perfecting' rather than 'executing' a duty. But I like too the ambiguity - that 'Perfection' could be read as a verb or an adjective. The voice is charmingly understated. The gentle rhythm is like the back and forth of waves that lap at the shore.

The listed items of flotsam and jetsam and the visual details paint a gorgeous picture while simultaneously revealing something about the narrator - a quiet diligence, a meticulousness, oh, and let's not forget that spirit of adventure! I l was captivated by the reverie of the lines "Somewhere, pirates cut their course,/ And we scour the bay each day with the glass," which is followed by a small bump of disappointment that there aren't in fact any ol' fashioned pirates, me hearties, to be spied through the 'glass' on the horizon. Back to the everyday, to the log, to the ledger, things in and things out.

I did enjoy these nuanced mood changes through the poem.

The ending, for me - perfection of execution.

[haleine]

Many thanks for all your comments, which are very encouraging. As a few people have queried "excision", the gloss on that is that it's a play on excise, part of the duty, customs theme, "seeking some greater excision" meaning trying to maximise revenue, but also means cutting something out, which is the speaker getting on another level a bit weird, trying to repress his own wanderlust, even surgically, which also relates to "plotting out my own fever" (in some tangled way I think I had in the recesses of my mind Eliot's "wounded surgeon plies the steel . . . Resolving the enigma of the fever chart" - not that there's any big deal connection of the meaning). I agree that the beginning's probably the best bit, but thanks especially to those who liked the ending, since that was the bit I wrote just before posting the poem. The rest dates from far too long ago. I changed the ending from "the lightship, commanded / by blind old Admiral Pew", which I still like, but I thought I should try and do it without Treasure Island. On the use of the line break after "even", I was going for spoken phrasing, where you have a pause to make what follows have more impact, which seems to me what people sometimes do with "even", even though you couldn't have punctuation after it in formal prose. The original inspiration for the whole thing was reading the preface to Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter where he complains about the tedium of working in the Custom House of Salem, Massachussets, and it turned into a general lament for my own loss of thrills in the face of the toad work.