Marvell’s Bermudas

Selected images stand as themselves:

not in a living but in an enamelled world

-- Raymond Williams

A godly remnant in an English boat on a mazy sea

row to the new world with the old one in their laps.

They sing songs of Eden replanted, of prelapsarian nights

and greener days, of a milk and honeyed land

where eternal spring enamels everything

and the shores are slick with amber.

Where lacquered melons fall at our feet,

and painted apples, glazed figs, titillate the eye,

where golden lamps hang suspended in a glassy air,

and birds and beasts wondrous rare,

are all polished claws and gilded wings,

still lives, stuffed souls, treasured and curated.

And as they approach the bountiful isle,

God lifts each man and woman from the boat

(as if bringing gems up from the sea), sets them

down with a taxidermist's care and proceeds

to preserve his newfound ones by embalming them

in their earthly colours for marvellous eternity.