From a Divorcé on the Reading of Homer at Age 45

You asked me to remember you at sea,
Near sea, or with the sea in afterthoughts
To tidal recollections where you sought
To set adrift an old felicity.

You ought then to have known the full portent
Of studied launchings. Spontaniety
Is in the keenest nature of the sea,
And, most diagnostically, my temperament;

You never sensed the cadences at war
In deeper motions of my moods, or thrust
Of each Odyssean impulse; I must
Have seemed an ebb tide in a lidded jar!

I read your postcards over; There is one . .•

A painted seascape ... rather overdone.