Mark Strand Black Sea

Black Sea by Marky Strand


One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear ...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here?


This is a more sensative poem. It permeates a man's heart when it desires one it can not have. He uses his infatuation with nature's beaty and the body's natural state to describe this woman whose hair is like the drak waves crashing in the night. Her darkness and ambiguity became his passion and his passion dorve him into a trance till sunrise. Her darkness became his passion until light. His desire is the passion he wants but in his hand. He wants her, the darkness, the passion, the light, his love to come to him to prove his worth. This level of testosterone is surprising for a poet. This display of wanting something simply so the result proves ones worth is present in many and reveals Strand's insecuirities or at least his depiction of the human insecurity that is fragile as glass and changing as the ocean. It is human nature and nature is human.