I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.
– "To The Harbormaster" by Frank O’Hara.
Thom Gunn wrote of this poem:
Waves are the medium for a ship as the air is the medium for a human being. They exist in an eternity different from God’s, and different again from the life-span of the ship or the man, and opposed to both, in a sense. That is the way things are, and O’Hara had better trust in the sanity of his body. "Sanity"—what a great word!
The Dish 