Lust has such a dark and viscous weight-
mooning like an oil slick,
humping and slumping on the tide
like a moaning leviathan sick with dreams,
pitching and ballasting darkly,
larded with a delirium on the greasy,
moon-dead swell.
O! dark and sumpy heaviness of lust!
obscuring light, bleaching undersea weeds
dying for sun; the wrack and the ruin
gagging for a sweet greenish lucence
under the streaky sleaze
of the greasy sea...

But now! O love!
do you see it? how it flies above!
flies above! a single white gull
sweeping on an arc of purpose
above the dying swell...
Free! oh, free!
How free and weightless to be
a white gull,
to wheel and cleanly slice
the sky with white.
O, beloved gull! soft-breathed, warm-breasted,
with a tiny and determined heart
beating away at the infinite...
O, brave little gull's heart
pulsing under a luminosity
of wing, of feather,
of pure animal flight!
a simple, a soulful ecstasy,
of feather, hollow bone and flesh...

O! brave little gull!
tender-hearted voyager!
They say from the earth's ice-encrusted pole
to land-locked one,
you might spend away your humble life.
O! brave bird!
brave gull with a pulsing heart,
tiny, yes, but so sure...
Bathe your soft wing in the sweet brilliance
of this bright and fearless dawn!