The Sea Fog

It was sudden.
That slightly heaving hotel, from a folder,
was there one instant: through the glass a bloodorange ball
just diving, a pure blue desert of dusk
on the other horizon: a motion, the symbol of seas;
music, and drinks, and the self-conscious apparel,
the relative facets, of steward and poster, and sun-disc
just hidden.
The ship spoke
with a minotaur sound from around and under,
and we raised our eyes: but the sea was gone:
sub-sun, the peel of moon, the plausible shift
of dunes of water, our precious image of movement-
gone, gone, clean gone. The fog was at the pane.
No shore behind us; ahead in the breathy drift
no port.
Supported
by shore and port, now we had neither.
There was only here. The ship was here
in the fog. The ship roared and the fog blotted
us into itself and whirled into its rifts,
and the sealess skyless fear-and there was fear-
had nothing to do with sinking-at least, not
into water.
Worse:
when we went below, at the familiar turn
a bulkhead reared instead, metal and huge-
and trapped, we turned from that hulk and hastened
through stranger stairs and came from a different angle
to a cabin stiller and smaller though none of its objects had moved.
But the mirror stirred like fog when we looked for the fastened face.
We crept
through fog all night but it closed behind us:
around and very close above:
only below in the black the self-lit fishes
passed ignorantly among the wrack of wrecks
and all the water held its tongue and gave
no password. And so sealed in our silent passage
we slept.
The bell
for the bulkhead doors to open, woke us.
Everything had been reconnected: sun to the sea,
ship to the sun, smiles to our lips, and our names related
to our eyes. Who could-in that brassy blue-
have stillness to harbor the memory
of being relative to nothing; isolated;
responsible?