The Isosceles Lighthouse

The empty lighthouse stood where the man who
built it died.
Skulls, ribs, hips, and thigh-shanks,
found there,
seven in number,
gave it a name to leave alone, and yet —
What was it drew the eye, the questioning
thought,
fixed the shape of space between the
flat-topped dunes and the northwest
capes of gneiss and granite, beetling
and seared by fire?
It was the lighthouse, the only object
at the middle point of the gravel island,
isosceles at the middle point of the
visible world.
And those who saw it, awake,
felt its presence in sleep
like a concrete unit of mind,
fearful and indispensible, imposing

conditions electric and simple.
They had to go there, those who saw it said,
go to the island, sail through the blurs of
mist,
over the racing sea, to arrive without
hurt.
But they never got there.
What was thought by them to be the island,
was it the island?
Was it a thing in itself
or a copy of what they had in their minds?
Whatever it was, or whatever it could have been,
it was a focus of force,
always there,
known and felt by them always.
There at the outward edge of a reef of
boulders
dotting the margins of vision
like a faraway herd of huge basking
seals
that even the flood tides
never were able to cover,
was the island with the lighthouse
standing midway upon it,
the thing, visioned and motionless,
and no sound except the sea,
boiling and racing.

On that isotherm
images of small craft,
canots du nord, sloops, yawls, and dories,
veering and pitching,
swept through their dreams.