The boats that bump so docile at the dock Are moored there slackly; no rowboat captain Even, but knows the moon-called sea takes line, And will have it, or hang the boats to break. I’m not a boat, my will is not a rope, And you, for all your changes and your pull tiding my heart’s rerunning salty well, Are not the pumicestone that queens the deep. Yet, I might as well be boat, and you moon, For though I fight, my blood bends with the sea, My body aching at my twisted will. How, unless a man tie back the ocean, Can taut lines help but snap, and how, once free, Can any man but be a tide-bound hull?