Melville On The Dock

it was gleaming bullion,

in the sequestered ships,
they opened their bird-
like eyes and pronounced in pouncing
gestures-

the clinking smack of flag,
and litigious cargo-
a gold of conversations the older rhymes blinking
back the nova of
superceding the chain crosses-

"a good sailor, men,"

at the new england port, standing abreast the puritanical calming
of the novena sea

"a good sailor does not pray,

because well it known our most
loving Lord does not hear the noble burst
of foreign matter

amidst the constancy of His
noble ocean"

a company-

stands and drinks. a young
man in a beard scribbles
a description.

keeps it some-
place