Pitching and Reeling

Here we go! We’re re-e-eling!
                  The glass-framed instructions
                                 rip off their nails.
A record player bashes you in the head
                                      with Doris Day.
Borscht, lazing in the galley,
                              takes off straight up, splashing
                                                      madly.
A bay leaf from the borscht,
                            stuck to the ceiling, steams.
Reel on, buddy!
       Sure, you’d like to catch hold of a bush or some grass
                                             with your hands!
The cabin boy staggers.
                       The helmsman staggers.
                                       The boatswain staggers.
                                              I’m staggering--
The waves like wolfhounds--
                      You’re just the same, Twentieth Century,
right-left
          left-right
                    up-down
                           down-up--
Reeling!
        All instructions shatter--
                                  all the portraits smash to hell!
Faces are death-white, drawn, wasted,
                                     under the stern, a
                                                     rat-like
                                                      screech--
And all over the place it’s dense with kasha,
                                        with downwind screams,
nothing but pitching and rolling, staggering, curving
with the taste of sick stomach in your mouth.
Reeling...
          A barrel jumps down the deck
                                  throwing itself at people.
Hey, old buddies, we’re in for it now
                                     but keep it cool anyway.
Crawl out of your cabins, otherwise
                                   it’s kaput for us all.
Reeling...
But the eyes of the harpooner
                             a ring-tailed roarer
are strained,
             and his forelock’s standing straight up.
He makes a soundless sign to the sailors
                                        and steals sideways
with a rope
           to the flipped-out barrel
and pitches himself like a cat
                              splitting open the crowd.
For he knows,
             you bastard pitch and roll,
things can get rough.
He’s learned by heart,
                      right through his skin,
                                             his red head.
He’s had it beat down through his skull:
Either you jump on the barrel
or it’ll jump
             all over you!
We’re reeling!
              But the barrel’s still, it’s no longer running
                                                     wild...
We’re reeling!
              Clear weather won’t run off from us...
Reeling!
        We may be seasick, darkness in front of our eyes--
But we’ll out-reel you
                      bad trip
                              anyway...

1964
Translated by James Dickey with Anthony Kahn