Kafka Poem: #2
Kafka Discovers He is on a Ship to the Edge of the Known World
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This is the second poem in my series of four Kafka poems that will be included once weekly until they are exhausted. The last, fifth, poem will be a brand new attempt. It’s in the kiln as we speak…
The link to my initial posting that includes the first Kafka poem is posted at the bottom of this page, in case you’ve missed it, with the introductory blat that explains the process of arrival for these poems.
And another thing: It’s come to my attention that those of you who get Compendium: The Kitchen Sink delivered to your email box may not realize that you can click on the title of the posting in your email and it will deliver you to my Substack site where you will have access to an archive of all my past posts.
Thanks for reading!
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Kafka Discovers He is on a Ship to the Edge of the Known World
Anything can happen.
This may not be a dream.
The sails
drum in the prevailing wind
and then turn stiff
as gun metal.
Kafka never sleeps.
The events of this voyage are well known
and few can survive.
Entire columns of people
slip over the edge
like revelation’s waterfalls
or the great heaving wash of a typhoon
over a low atoll—
we are not even small.
The leviathans
and other beasts
in the hair at the end of the world
can barely restrain us.
Kafka holds his ears and squints his eyes.
The thunder still vibrates the hold
where the last seafarers
drink their brandy
bowlegged
from their absences. The world
cannot stay under its rain
and all seeing must stop
so the spray of dirges and whirlpools
can be employed in any effort
to avoid that final fall.
Kafka gets an earring for his trouble.
He has been pitched in his own turmoil
for so long, none of the blistering sirens
at the end of the world
make him vomit or weep.
He is still alone
and no one can save him
because they cannot save themselves.
***
There is a beauty in the terror
of the unknown.
We picture
our telescopes and our satellites
with their eyes
further and further out to sea
preparing us
for some tremendous suck
that awaits our approach
at the end of the eye.
Might as well fuck and sleep and drink
the drink of the doomed.
He is us.
Kafka has a surer footing on the deck
than anyone expects.
But he is no captain
and the rigging and what’s left
of the sails
are the puzzle in his poets’ heart.
No one is singing now.
The islands cascade
and bend
and all the fins
and every baleen jaw
succumb. There are so many buzzards
we mistake them for albatross
or eagles.
It hardly matters.
Kafka knows this:
there is no breach
between this foundering
and the drowning of the beasts.
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