‘We will lay this thing here’ Thus spake the voice of the sea, Murmuring wearily— In the rock’s ear—
Then the green laver rose, Shook out her folds & cried, Before the rising tide ‘Let me repose—
Stir not my rest O sea, With dead things in these silent deeps, Surely wave tossed he sleeps As heavily’—
The weedhung chambers then Made answer—’O thou sea, The beasts that feed in me What need they men’—
Rock limpets cowering, Murmured gloom shaded—’There is meat Enough for all to eat Bear hence this thing—
In thy strong arms O sea, Out, even to the quicksands’ brink, It shall be that he sink— There, utterly.’
‘We will lay this thing here’ Thus spake the voice of the sea, Ever persistently In the rock’s ear.
*****
Julie Steiner writes: “Even Kipling seems to have had doubts about this metrically fluid, grisly poem about a wave-battered corpse, since he never included it in any of his collections. When I encountered it on the website of the Kipling Society, I immediately started writing a glosa about how strange the poem seemed to me. (A glosa is a Spanish form that meditates on another poem, by turning each line of a four-line excerpt into the refrain of a ten-line stanza.)
“To my surprise, my glosa turned into an ars poetica statement about why I’ve kept returning to certain grim topics (including child sexual abuse) in my own work, despite repeated rejection from those who turn a “rock’s ear” to them. As is their right, of course.”
*****
Glosa on Kipling’s ‘Rejection’
‘We will lay this thing here’
Thus spake the voice of the sea,
Murmuring wearily—
In the rock’s ear—
Off-kilter, this odd composition. Kipling’s, you say? It counters cognition to think such a tub-thump musician had noodled with meter that way. Anapestic? Syllabic, at times? The scansion’s unclear. Both margins career. Irregular pulses. Wrenched rhymes. ‘We will lay this thing here’:
So tidal vicissitudes shrug with listless resistance, refusing to lug what a shove against gravity’s tug can abandon. And yet there’s persistence within this passivity, too. It wills itself free, determined to be unburdened of what it can spew. Thus spake the voice of the sea.
Its shape-shifting cadences show the moon-manic force as lines ebb and flow. The sea’s letting everything go: this thing that it wants to divorce; poetic convention; attention to naysayers. (Three say no with esprit, but the matter’s not up for contention.) Murmuring wearily
becomes, by the end of the song, Ever persistently. Yes, as obsessions prolong, revulsions grow strong. Push on, then, Subconscious. Express what silent deeps hide. We will lay this thing here. Set it down on these pages, to clear the rot-ridden tide In the rock’s ear.
*****
Julie Steiner is a pseudonym in San Diego, California. Most of her published poems—many of them in repeating forms—are available on Substack at Off-Piste on Mount Parnassus (offpisteonmountp.substack.com).
Painting: Axel Johan Gustaf Acke, ‘Leander’s Body Washed Ashore’. Public domain
a bored and haughty wife, now sidelined and abeyed, half-pivoting within a flood-tide of brocade, smiles at the black-skinned boy who bears her dress’s train. final tercet of the French sonnet “The Dogaressa” by José-Maria de Heredia (1842–1905)
Veneto, black-skinned boys, and trains: displaced by devastation, young Africans with pluck and brains revive that combination. They search these railcars for remains of others’ dislocation, like gleaners seeking fallen grains — a task of desperation.
Before each stop, the train brakes grind. We pause. We recommence. A boy appears, as if assigned. His scrutiny’s intense. He scans for objects left behind through lack of care or sense. (I guess. I’ve yet to see one find a bit of recompense.)
We stop. We go. The scene repeats, on every train we’ve taken. The boy surveys the floors and seats for anything forsaken, and — empty-handed still — retreats, his eagerness unshaken. I’ve seen his clones on city streets. What trades do they partake in?
Some hold out cups to beg, although we blind, deaf crowds move on. (They tug our heart- and purse-strings, so we play automaton.) Some boys this age get pimped, I know. Some pilfer things to pawn. The train brakes shriek. We stop. We go. Our boy’s come back. He’s gone.
He’s trapped in this recurrent dream. I feel I’m trapped here, too. The other passengers don’t seem to see him passing through, except a few who show extreme contempt (as I construe their narrowed eyes’ attentive gleam). That, too, is déjà vu.
“A zodiac of sorts,” I muse: The Wailing One. The Doors. The Kid who seeks what others lose. The Gaggle that ignores. The Watchdog ready to accuse young scapegoats it abhors. And I, the Poet, prone to use portentous metaphors.
Again, these constellations wheel. Again, I contemplate commuters’ faces, which reveal obliviousness or hate. Another horrifying squeal. Another hurried wait. Another search. How must he feel, this boy, about his fate?
Though circumstances brought him here, not slavers, is he free? He scrambles just to live, it’s clear, although he ought to be in school. He’ll be no engineer. No teacher. No M.D. Survival is his life’s career, decides society.
I think what lives my children lead. I think of things I’ve read. The long-dead voices that I heed. The headlines in my head. The decadence. The waste. The greed. The desperate. The dead. What choice was smooth-faced Ganymede presented with instead?
He rode to immortality, but did he have a say? Consent’s a triviality to gods, some might inveigh, and rape’s a technicality (defined the ancient way), and pederasts’ carnality had stricter rules of play.
I know. But circumstances tore that kid from loved ones’ care to Mount Olympus, where he bore the things that slave-boys bear. And bears them still, forevermore. No beard, no death, can spare young Ganymede, exploited for eternity up there.
No, no, he’s fortunate, insist some authors. He’s adored. Complimented. Cuddled. Kissed. Ambrosia’s his reward for having topped the favorites list of such a lofty lord. The death we mortals face, he missed. That shouldn’t be ignored.
A palace slave is nonetheless a slave, and can’t decline a burden, though it might oppress: a massive cup of wine; the heavy train of someone’s dress who thinks herself divine; the weight of knowing each caress means mainly “This is mine.”
The dogaressa eyes her toy. Her property. Her pet. Some see in him what might destroy stability — a threat. But I behold a human boy ensnared in power’s net. What games his owner might enjoy will fuck him up, I bet.
But maybe I misjudge her smile. I view it through the prism of factors I must reconcile, like French conservatism, a splash of Afrophobic bile, and anti-feminism. Perhaps she’s not a pedophile. (Forgive my skepticism.)
Perhaps she smiles because she’s kind (though labeled “bored” and “haughty”). Perhaps the lady’s too refined to have a thought that’s naughty. The dots connected in my mind to Ganymede are dotty, perhaps. To me, though, they’re combined. These points are not staccati:
Aquarius, the catamite within the Zodiac; a twisted queen who claims the right to toy with pawns; this black — and therefore foreign — youngster’s plight, forever circling back in search of luck. These trains unite on thought’s recursive track.
He’s African. He’s Syrian. He’s Phrygian. He’s Rom. He’s Asian. He’s Nigerian. He’s white, but can’t go home. His bedroom is empyrean: its roof is heaven’s dome. His cup’s part full, in theory. In it? Coins. It’s styrofoam.
He’s Ganymede, collectively, yet every clone’s unique. They all seem doomed to tragedy, but don’t mistake mystique and myth for how things have to be. Inertia’s prospect’s bleak, but railroad cars and history change course with friction’s shriek.
He’s made it to the Occident. (Let’s pause now to salute ourselves, and our enlightenment.) His homeland tried to shoot and starve him. He should be content he didn’t drown en route. He’s lucky! Don’t misrepresent the fact he’s destitute.
Some myths should really be revised. Some fictions should appall. When those who claim they’re civilized spew racist vitriol, and orphaned kids are demonized by oligarchs, we all should spot the pattern, unsurprised. The writing’s on the wall.
The doorway yawns. I stiffly rise on travel-swollen feet. At noon, I crossed the Bridge of Sighs; my daytrip’s now complete. The train goes on, with one surprise — a monetary treat for hopeful, homeless, hungry eyes — between one wall and seat.
*****
“In 2016, while an estimated 363,348 refugees and other migrants successfully crossed the Mediterranean to reach Europe, an additional 5,136 people who attempted that journey were either confirmed drowned or reported missing (Source) — still a record now, ten years later.
“New installments of that ongoing tragedy were generating some of ‘the headlines in my head’ (Stanza 9, Line 4) in the summer of 2016, when I accompanied my mother on a 10-day Mediterranean cruise. We arrived in Padua a few days early so we could adjust to jet lag, and from there we made day trips by train to Ravenna and Venice before our cruise began.
“During our day in Venice, I was startled by the profusion of Moretto- or Blackamoor-themed luxury items I kept coming across, all gold-adorned: Jewelry. Doorknobs. Lamps. Tables. Atlas-like figures supporting architectural features. On the 9pm train back to our hotel in Padua, I pondered this centuries-old fascination with Blackness among Venetians of great wealth. My mind had just wandered to the little Black boy at the end of Heredia’s sonnet “The Dogaressa” when, as if on cue, a very dark-skinned African immigrant of about ten years old arrived for the first of his many hurried inspections of our train car.
“For the decade it took me to finish and find a home for ‘Ganymede in Northeast Italy (Veneto),’ that child has kept returning to my thoughts. Perhaps now he will haunt others’ thoughts, too.
“I am very grateful to David Stephenson for publishing this long poem in Pulsebeat Poetry Journal and to my fellow workshoppers at Eratosphere for telling me what wasn’t working in two earlier drafts over the years.”
*****
Julie Steiner is the pseudonym of a recovering classicist in San Diego, California. Her original poetry and verse translations from Italian, Spanish, French, Latin, and Greek have appeared in many venues — most recently, Light, Lighten Up Online, Literary Matters, The New Verse News, and The Ekphrastic Review. For links to some of these poems, visit her Substack, Off-Piste on Mount Parnassus (offpisteonmountp.substack.com).
