Cargo Boat Under White Birds, An Unfinished Sketch Poem by Bernard Henrie

The fish slow behind our cargo boat
and the Indian Ocean heats and stops.
A lassitude grows in the cast off void
of featureless domains; I think of home
but fish hold us back, birds will not pull
with their wings. I am alone again
with clouded stars old and burning out,
a growing sense of separation from men,
the dulled ability to love my wife, turpitude
and the falling away of self, rain that balks
and never drops, sky that will not change,
a flight of white birds come far out
silent and asleep on the purling wind.