This is a poem about the great ships that wandered
            the oceans
And groaned sometimes in deep voices, grumbling about fog
            and submerged peaks,
But usually they sliced the pages of tropical seas
            in silence,
Divided by height, category, and class, just like our communities
            and hotels.
Beneath the deck poor emigrants played cards, and no one
            won
While on the highest deck Claudel gazed at Ysé and her hair
            glowed.

And toasts were raised to a safe trip, to coming
            times,
Toasts were raised, Alsatian wine and champagne
            from France's finest vineyards,
Some days were static, windless, when only the light seeped   
            steadily,
Days when nothing happened but the horizon, which traveled
            with the ship,
Days of emptiness and boredom, playing solitaire, repeating
            the latest news,
Who'd been seen with whom in a tropical night's shade, embracing
            beneath a peach-colored moon.

But filthy stokers tirelessly tossed coal into open
            flaming mouths
And everything that is now already existed then, but
            in condensed form.
Our days already existed and our hearts baked
            in the blazing stove,
And the moment when I met you may also have existed,
           and my mistrust
Brittle as a faience plate, and my faith, no less frail
           and capricious,
And my searches for the final answer, my
          disappointments and discoveries.

Great ships: some sunk suddenly, arousing consciences
          and fear,
Gaining deathless fame, becoming stars
          of special bulletins.
Others went peacefully, waned without a word in provincial
          ports, in dockyards,
Beneath a coat of rust, a ruddy fur of rust, a slipcover of rust,
          and waited
For the final transformation, the last judgment of souls and
          objects,
They wait as patiently as chess players in Luxembourg Garden
          nudging pieces a fraction of an inch or so.