This Sea Within, Without – A Poem

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Central America, conflict, Deborah J. Brasket, History, Latin America, life, Nature, Novel, poem, poetry, sea, This Sea Within, Ukraine, war

by Joaquin Sorolla

I wrote this poem for a novel I’m writing about love and war in Central America. It’s written in the voice and style of a 19th century poet about the ceaseless, ongoing struggles that have ravaged his land since before the Conquistadors. As they have been going on Ukraine since the Vikings plundered tribal villages, before the Mongols came and slaughtered all of them, before Hitler, before Putin.

This poem speaks to the ceaseless cycles of peace and plunder that haunt our histories and our hearts, but also to the spirit of the people who weather such storms. Although it will no doubt undergo further revisions before the novel is ready to hand over to my agent, I wanted to share it with you now, in honor of the brave spirit of the Ukrainian people who are weathering this storm today.

This Sea Within, Without

This sea that lies within, without, all things,
All bodies, minds, and soaring hearts and grasping hands,
Past, present, and evermore.
This ceaseless stirring, this Siren’s call, these froward thoughts
And listless rhythms that know no end.
This urgent quest.

This sea that it throws itself upon our shores
With grand bluster, heaving boulders and breaking cliffs,
Leaving in its wake a disaster of debris,
The detritus of society and small broken things,
A child’s bracelet, an empty bottle, shattered shells and battered lives,
Fallen faces like
Flies rummaging through abandoned seaweed.

This sea within, without, unbroken in its vastness,
Spreads out like a calm comforting blanket of blue, its lacy
Traces whispering secrets in our ears,
Seducing us with sleepless dreams as it
Reaches across the sand to wash our feet and sings its pleasure in the sun,
Its tender kisses everywhere,
Its mesmerizing music everywhere,
Calling children, and lovers young and old, to its shores,
To romp among its waves like playful porpoises,
Safe as sand.

And so it lures and soothes and laments,
Before it lashes out, breaking
Whole continents apart
Leaving all in ruin.

This Sea within, without,
Pouring across the centuries in
Endless rhythmic cycles of peace and plunder,
Plunder and peace,
Ever restless, relentless.

This sea within, without
Each heart, each nation, each age and eon.
We and sea and all that lies between,
Taking our pleasure where we may in warm, balmy breezes,
Finding our strength in broad strokes as we surf and swim,
Taking our lives into our hands as we resist
Its uprising roar
As it crashes down and drowns our dreams.

O drowning heart, O vale of tears
O lovers lost, O sons and daughters,
O detritus of raging storms,
Be not dismayed.
As ceaseless as the turmoil is, so is the spirit that rides upon it
And survives to rise again.

Savor the sun’s sweet kisses and the balmy breezes,
Hold them close, don’t let go.
Even when the broad drowning seas rise up and crash down,
Do not despair.
Tis the way of weather,
And of weathered hearts, and leathered minds,
And grasping hands, and the sons of man.

So we lay our hearts and histories
Upon such shores as storms do rage
And retreating bare all to see
Such luster still in the strong arms and stalwart hearts
Of souls long lost.

Where all that’s left of mighty ships’ splintered rails
And torn sails sink below and wait to rise
Once more. Once more.

By Deborah J. Brasket, 2022, from the novel This Sea Within

The poem is read by the protagonist of my novel on a plane heading toward a war-torn country in Central America in 1973. On the plane she’s been reading the history of Latin America starting with the conquistadors and the destruction of two major civilizations that had persisted for 3500 years until the Cortez arrived. The history continues with ongoing struggles of so many countries in Central America to become independent nations, and then to break the hold of one brutal dictator after another, each propped up by the United States after the Monroe Doctrine went into effect. The constant civil wars and guerrilla warfare in the region, and her own country’s involvement in that is disheartening, to say the least, to the young, idealistic woman.

But then she reads the poem of one of the most cherished poets from that region which speaks to this very condition of constant strife, and surprisingly, it heartens her.

I don’t know if it will hearten you as well, but I thought I’d offer it here in that spirit.

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Albert Ryder, A Wild Note of Longing

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Albert Pinkham Ryder, art, artist, maritime paintings, myths, Paintings, reality, sailing, sea, visual art

With Sloping Mast and Sinking Prow, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

He’s considered by many the father of American modern art, and yet I’d never heard of him until visiting the New Bedford Whaling Museum this October. I was stunned and mesmerized by what I saw, and astonished I’d never seen his work before. The exhibit “A Wild Note of Longing” was aptly named. The wildness of his images, the sense of mystery and romance, evokes a kind of longing of the spirit, of the heart, for something that lies just beyond our reach.

”Have you ever seen an inch worm crawl up a leaf or twig,” Ryder once wrote, ”and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach something? That’s like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.”

The Flying Dutchman, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Apparently I’m not alone in that feeling of being struck by lightning when I first discovered Ryder’s paintings so unexpectedly (in a whaling museum!). The Flying Dutchman was the first painting I saw walking into the gallery. Since coming home I’ve being doing research and came across a lecture given by artist Bill Jensen on his first encounter with Ryder’s work: “[I] rounded a corner and discovered five small Ryder paintings salon hung. I felt as if I had been hit by lightning. I had never seen paintings that had such PRESENCE.”

‘I was struck by a LIGHT that seemed to burn from deep within them. I was struck by the painting’s intense DRAMA: their EMOTIONAL AND INTELLECTUAL GESTURING of every shape, every mark, every color to every shape, mark, and color; their weight of immense DENSITY and in the next instant their WEIGHTLESSNESS. They had a feeling that time had been COMPRESSED. They had that “SLAP IN THE FACE REALITY” that reveals powerful INVISIBLE FORCES in and around us. These paintings seem to be constructed of LIVING TISSUE.’ [Emphasis his. You can read the rest of his lecture notes here.]

Sea Tragedy, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Of course I’ve always been drawn to images of ships at sea, and that’s part of the appeal. There’s so much drama here, so much movement, you can almost hear the waves beating against the hull, the shrieking of the wind in the sails, feel your body hefted by the waves as you grasp at the rails, mesmerized by the beauty and the wildness of it all.

I wrote a poem once called Night Howl about being on a hurricane watch aboard La Gitana one night in Pago Pago, Samoa. These images remind me of that poem and that night, and so many other moonlit nights at sea.

I wrote in that blog post: “Human consciousness is the mirror through which the universe sees and knows itself, and through which we see and know ourselves—the fullness of being, our primal past and present standing face to face.” That’s what I see in Ryder’s paintings, but it’s not just the sea images that move me. It’s also his use of color and composition, the elemental shapes and striking contrasts, the way light seems to emerge out of the paintings, and the themes he choses, so many drawn from myth and legends.

Below are a few more favorites, including what is considered his masterpiece–Jonah.

The Tempest, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Begger Maid and the King, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Siegfried and the Rhine Maidens, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Jonah, by Albert Pinkham Ryder

Some say Ryder is a painter of dreams. But as Jensen says in his notes on Ryder: “This can be misleading unless one understands that dreams are reality condensed.” This is true of the myths and legends and Biblical stories that he uses as points of departure to reveal what lies below the surface of our common day experience—that “something more” we yearn for that lies so tantalizingly just beyond the reach of our fingertips.

The Joy of Sailing in Song, Poetry & Art

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art, Joy, music, poetry, sailing, sea, songs, summer, Winslow Homer

I came across this much beloved sailing poem recently, which captures so beautifully and vividly my own exuberant experiences at sea aboard La Gitana. I’ve paired it with paintings by the “Poet of the Sea” Winslow Homer, along with some classic sailing songs: Christopher Cross’s “Sailing” and Loggins and Messina’s “Vahevala,” which includes some beautiful sailing video as well as some amazing guitar, flute, and violin riffs.

There’s noting that captures the joy of summer more than sailing.

Sea Fever

I must down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by,
And the wheel’s kick and wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking,
A gray mist on the sea’s face and gray dawn breaking.
I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the seagulls crying.
I must down to the seas to the vagrant gypsy life.
To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow rover,
And quiet sleep and sweet dream when the long trick’s over.

by John Edward Masefield (English poet, writer 1878-1967)