Ms. Peyroux; your car is waiting. Fix yourself a drink, make yourself comfortable.  I'll only be about ten minutes late.

	The Yachts



contend in a sea which the land partly encloses

shielding them from the too-heavy blows

of an ungoverned ocean which when it chooses



tortures the biggest hulls, the best man knows

to pit against its beatings, and sinks them pitilessly.

Mothlike in mists, scintillant in the minute



brilliance of cloudless days, with broad bellying sails

they glide to the wind tossing green water

from their sharp prows while over them the crew crawls



ant-like, solicitously grooming them, releasing,

making fast as they turn, lean far over and having

caught the wind again, side by side, head for the mark.



In a well guarded arena of open water surrounded by

lesser and greater craft which, sycophant, lumbering

and flittering follow them, they appear youthful, rare



as the light of a happy eye, live with the grace

of all that in the mind is feckless, free and

naturally to be desired. Now the sea which holds them



is moody, lapping their glossy sides, as if feeling

for some slightest flaw but fails completely.

Today no race. Then the wind comes again. The yachts



move, jockeying for a start, the signal is set and they

are off. Now the waves strike at them but they are too

well made, they slip through, though they take in canvas.



Arms with hands grasping seek to clutch at the prows.

Bodies thrown recklessly in the way are cut aside.

It is a sea of faces about them in agony, in despair



until the horror of the race dawns staggering the mind;

the whole sea become an entanglement of watery bodies

lost to the world bearing what they cannot hold. Broken,



beaten, desolate, reaching from the dead to be taken up

they cry out, failing, failing! their cries rising

in waves still as the skillful yachts pass over.



		William Carlos Williams