Forty knots, a bugle call -- our heads bowed down in sorrow.
As for the others, medallioned, cold in body bags,
they jettison to the bottom of the Coral Sea.
We bend to the angle of their descent and weep,
weep for those of us who are going home.
A reveille for souls, and flesh for the sharks
that surface-feed the archipelagoes of Asia.
From Leyte and Mindanao, Adak and the Aleutians,
we hear an ocean's fury, sirens of a ghost ship sailing.
At dusk, to a crimson swelling in the sky
we heft our nine cocoons to the gunnels
and pitch them over, blessed by Christ
they scuttle downwards to where there is no light.
And the ship--the USS Intrepid -- makes for
the Port of New York, having saved the world
from slant-eyed domination once again.
But each atoll is destroyed, each pearl of the sea
is black and razed, its dunes collapsing at midnight.
As for us, the salt-bit seamen of Billy Budd,
we sleep above the restless graves tonight
and dream the day when the dead shall rise in laughter.