Serial Drunken Boat Fragment

(after Rimbaud)

 

I sailed impassive streams; soon, unannoyed,
Sensed the coward boatmen'd fucked off
Landward: nailed by redskins to trees'
Bloodied boles. Flint points shot out --

Weary of English cotton and Dutch
Grain, my mourning's rudimentary. Voided now
Of boatmen, cargo, everything but me,
Roiled fluid trails my ship down

-stream; clattering through foam noise mountains,
Winter-locked, ultra-child's-brain-deaf,
I ran

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First published in Mirage #4/Period(ical) #34, September 1994

Read A note on serial poetry (June 2002)

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