Against Opulence

A glosa with Thomas Hardy’s “The Convergence of the Twain”

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Yes, in disaster’s aftermath, court

is not royal accommodation,

more, the verb to court,

courting disaster on titanic liners

or inside houses built on stilts

along the salty coasts.

Over the mirrors meant

to reflect the complexion

of statesmen in staterooms

there are shadows of ghosts—

finned and gilled and with

scales that do not measure gold.

And currents cannot wait

To glass the opulent

because more than reflection

there’s refraction. More than

strands of jewels, I see scrawls

—iambic lines drafted in silt,

verses ending in heroic couplet—

on the ocean floor, where after all

The sea-worm crawls—

Still, if I only see the abyssal zone

versus waves of plankton and sun,

volcanic episodes will be missed.

Islands of plastics will swirl,

mid-ocean, unnoticed.

In my compact, I too reflect

grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

Notes:

This piece is part of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize portfolio in the October 2023 issue.

Source: Poetry (October 2023)