Cape Horn

WHITE on the brows of headlands snowed the snow,
And there were huge and sooty birds that flew
As if there were not anywhere to go
But round, with the extinction of the blue,
Round and round about the screw.

How long we labored in that sullen sea
And beat, aft high, bow under, down the swells
I don’t remember, nor did it comfort me
The Horn was doubled once by caravels,
Probably in wilder spells.

But there we were, where only a rare sun warms
The bitter air, where rarely if at all
A mast goes by the sleeping cape in storms
To put in safely at a port of call,
Intact and tree-trunk tall.

Time that wasted with the wake held out the choice
To wander deep in an uncertain strait,
To listen closely for the vessel’s voice
Rebounding from the cliff, a sound like fate
That cries to us, “Too late.”

We did no more than linger at the mouth,
Imagining what drew Magellan in,
Then drove ahead a steady course still south
To where great seas like falling walls begin
With a Pacific din.

Oh, we were glad to see the outpost pass,
The wind less hard, the lookout less than blind,
To clean the Horn corrosion from the brass,
To shed the Horn corrosion from the mind,
With death outrun behind.