Mad Shelley’s Death

​

Fact: it’s true.  I was on mad Shelley’s boat,
these sixty years long gone, when he ran it to Hell.
Mad he acted—mad as a rabid dog
loose on a dog-day noon, and I—sixteen
with English pluck and ready to leap for the sun
and snatch the stars to rattle before  your face…

​

And yes, you’re right—this is the old wharf
where it all began.  It’s rotting, blackened, and bent,
with a sagging back like mine, but in those times,
back sixty years, in eighteen twenty and two,
these planks had a spring, were firm and bright, and I—
oh I was a lad on a lark, too quick sixteen
to mope on a hulk from uncle’s Livorno villa
north to father’s Spezia bayside manse.
Passage on a native tub?  Never!  Sixteen
and tall and a-bounce with English blood, I leapt,
sprang from the planks of the wharf to a little boat,
rowed like the wind and grabbed Shelley’s hull
as she skipped and skimmed right past, rigged for speed,
lean and swift, bright canvas enough for a fleet—
and I, oh I too—lean and swift and bright.

​

That sea was sporty and game and I sprang out light,
and light as a sea-mew lit on the gleaming deck
too late to be sent ashore—a lad on a lark!

​

Look—the bay lies oily, feigning sleep—
whispering, wily, out to the waiting haze.
Oh yes, I often sit here, stare at the wharf
and the wretched miles and miles of heaving death.
The Italian boatmen, they wonder:  Who is this man,
this finely dressed old Englishman, propped on his cane?
And I too wonder: 
                        But if I’d stood my post…?

Ah yes, the voyage.  Never told ‘til now,
but the sea, they say, will heave up all, one day,
and I’ve not long ‘til port.

                                      We laughed and sang;
we passed Viareggio fine, full sail ahead,
proud, our thrusting spinnaker bulging big.

But then, from afore, a blanket of cloud appeared,
advanced, cut off the sun, and a sudden dusk
stopped our chatter.  Ahead, just east of north,
a blue-black pall arose, congealed to a mass,
ragged, streaked with flickering lightning veins.
Our young sailor, Charles, reached for the wheel.
He called,  Let’s bring her about, sir!  Let’s reef sail!
But Shelley slapped his hand away and flung
the wheel right back; he straightened the prow, dead
to the shaggy, heaving, whirling blackness ahead,
and called out over the whining wind in the spars,
Look there, Williams.
                                He pointed toward the black
and soaring madness raging just ahead.
That is the true wind,  the One Mind
smashing the stagnant world, building a glory,
a chaos…
             Shelley’s tone was almost calm,
as though stating the obvious. but then his voice
became tighter:
                        …from which a new world,
a rebuilt world of revolution will come.

Williams, breathless, Shelley, that storm is a killer!
Shelley paused.  Williams, when I was a lad,
I fell in a screaming fit.  It touched me then
and I saw the vast light, the One Mind
that smashes death and the million lies of life...
He sang out, laughing:  Hear the rigging sing?

The beauty, shining, playing us like a harp...

The cleansing wind, the shattering breath of song...

​

He commanded Williams, Hoist more canvas!  Hoist!
But a sudden blast of wind and battering spray
blew Willliams off his feet.  He grabbed a cable,
tried to haul himself up to take the wheel,
but Shelley pushed him away.  We were all shouting,
Suicide!  Strike the sails!  Bring her to port!

​

The ocean swiftly blackened, laced with white,
the rain squalled, the darkness ahead wailed,
and the sea rose up, heaved off her sporty grin
and lunged with a yell, frothing, charging, crazed
like a mob gone wild with gin, run mad for the kill,
while bloody Shelley shrilled in his high damned voice,
Full sail ahead and steady!
                                        He held her straight,
straight to the storm’s raging, hammering heart
and the ill-set sails cracked like cannon shot.
He was mad for sail, that wild-man, mad for the wind,
while every craft on the sea was scudding for shore,
and the crews nearby cried out, Come aboard!  Turn back!

Reef sail or you’re lost!  But Shelley was fairly chanting:
Set more sail for the wind to whirl us awake,
to blow this darkening ember alight, alive,
to live, be a flame, be a flaming song—Oh wind…

He struck my hand from the ropes, his thin red hair
pasted sleek by the rain.  I shouted back,
What can you see, man?  What’s out there in the spray?
And Shelley: Perfect!  Perfect!  Ah, no god!
There is no god but this!  The light—the wind…

Just then, a low-slung native craft swept up,
nearly scraping our planks;
                                        I was over the rail
and onto her deck with the screaming wind behind,
as Shelley’s craft vanished astern in the spray
with the crack of her sails and the creak of tortured wood,
and I shouted back,  You bloody crazy fool!
Singing, wide-eyed, singing for wind, for flame!...

Just before I leapt, he called out, Light!
The storm of light—the calm,
where nothing, nothing, nothing remains itself…

​

Eight days later, his bloated, stinking corpse
dirtied the shore with his rot.

​

                                            Whatever he saw—
sheer glory, mad salvation—I saw death:
death by shipwreck, death by shrieking wind,
and wild tons of furious, crushing sea—
Destruction was what I saw—
                                            But no, there was more—
for in that moment, I saw—I felt—that space
where all of life dissolves to a still flame,
silent, clear as the blue, unflickering glow
floating over a spirit lamp—the light
that brooks nothing, leaves nothing real,
pure abolition, purest end of all,
an ecstasy of still, consuming zero,
and a vanished world
.                                   No!  I shouted.   Life!
Give back my life!  I hate you, scribbling fool!

I reached my uncle’s place and I told some tale
of wine I’d drunk with students, of a leap from the pier,
of swimming ashore, a long walk in the hills,
an overnight with friends…a lad on a lark.

My uncle laughed, and the world congealed, fell,
and I too fell toward life: my uncle’s wealth,

                                                                      
my father’s state, a long, distinguished life—
power, diplomatic silken smiles;
ladies, conversazioni, hunts,
and all that sameness—that successful round.

And often, often I think of Shelley’s wail,
his wild, shrilling cry, blown to the wind.

And if I’d remained?  If I had stood my post
and borne that still, that deep, that shattering light
that empties all, cleanses space for a truth,
and welcomed all world’s end and faced that peace—

But I held fast to the earth—
a lad on a lark…