Oh, don’t young girls choke off good old boys.
Like gold, your body was weighted
But precious.

If dipped in water you sank, my great hero of the rolling seas.

And, when they extract my memories,
I cough up neither name nor
The tongue to utter it.

I saved your swimming body near sweet Tripoli, once, before my machinations gave it weights.

I hissed and swore about the Greatest, about - good god! -
Then the irons on my hands and bars
Collected barnacles.

Years later, Venetian squalor, churning through sick water, and your silks submerged you.

To see a girl plunge, first through white crests,
Second cascading white down,
Was to sow the seeds in sand.

Call me by my name, the one I gave the Greatest, and feed my empty tongue.