The Sailor Man Poem by Zahrin Nazah

The ripples of the ocean rise like restless beasts, heaving higher and higher, and I stand alone with my binoculars.
A speck against the endless blue.
Above me, skylarks wheel like scattered sparks,
a flock fleeing the Black Sea's shadow, their wings pointing toward some far, forgotten port
I may never reach.

The ocean roars; a voice older than any living creatures'
calling from unfathomed depths.
Perhaps a Mermaid Deity sits upon her throne below,
in a palace carved from moonlit coral.
Her virgin daughters combing their silver hair;
while they wait for storms to pass.
Or maybe a cursed Greek God;
A Fallen Angel in chains of salt and silence,
Writhes in eternal punishment
beneath this shifting, furious water.
Such are the tales that haunt
the lonely heart of a sailor man.

Never loved to eat fish;
Their scent clings to me
as sharply as the smell of plants
and flowers and sour yogurt.
Days blur into weeks,
weeks dissolve into months.
My only companions:
the roaring sea, the biting wind,
the wide, indifferent ocean.
No signal, no voice, no world beyond:
only salt, and sky,
and water painted with fire at dusk.

If this day is my last,
if the ship shudders, breaks, and sinks
and I am buried in a cold blue grave,
No one will know where I drifted,
how I vanished.
Perhaps I'll be devoured—
a quiet feast for sharks,
for whales with ancient eyes, Piranhas
or for venomous sea serpents
that glide like shadows through the dark.

And so my tale will end,
lost in the whispering deep;
The unfinished story
of a sailor man!