SOTTO VOCE
(Italian term – usually used in a musical context, meaning ‘under the voice’ or ‘in a quiet tone’)
Striking, the ambiguity of language – sound
and sound, hold
and hold, birth
and berth.
Sotto voce. Sotto voce.
Our brave boat’s hull
is a dull silver arc
at odds, and at one
with the ocean’s shifting
meniscus, the sky infinite
yet Doubtful as a clenched fist,
a menace of wishful thinking.
Mariners without local knowledge
are advised to exercise caution.
I am no old man of the sea (my stomach
one of two that pitch and turn
in 4m swells), but Lance and the Breaksea Girl
are unperturbed; back and forth she rocks
back and forth, a metronome used, by now,
to holding her own in stormy waters.
Sotto voce. Sotto voce.
Ours is hardly the first voyage, neither will it be
the last. There are records aplenty
of this coastline, these steep, hard-nosed
mountains, the seductive tongues
of waterfalls.
I have scoured the record books,
wondered more about the lines not there
than the many written; nowhere
do we find Cook – or Orton –
writing of love or lust
or loneliness at sea; in the journals, no poetry
to soften the un-yielding years, the reek
of sour beer and unwashed skin,
the loud absence of women.
These men, too, must surely have known
the sudden singe of heat
on heart, the un-confided bruise?
But
who
am
I
to
make
such
assumptions?
On the edge of the clearing weather,
mountain, sky and ocean lean towards
each other with conspiratorial intention.
They are lifetimes ahead of us
the way they know how to sleep
together, dream together, lie awake
in the dark together, rarely - and always -
alone
with their separate thoughts.
Where are we to drop anchor?
I am reluctant to interrupt this silence.
CB - Western Fiordland, New Zealand 2007/2010
