The milky nets of foam cast-out, regathered,
catch our gazes, whispering us in,
tangle us in strong toils, raise us elemental,
as orange sand in the lilting breakers
dash us out, swash in the long abrading
of margins, of time and tide itself, as the fishers,
sun and moon, adjust with little backsteps.
Cuchulain was deceived as was deranged Caligula;
misunderstood Knut fixed in the same fable,
confrontation's foolish as moth to pane;
the longing's dolphin, though never fit
to follow Triton's chariot or dine
with the beaked mermaids on coral bone,
yet we are un-landed at the last
and roll we do in Thalassa moonwater,
Ea sun-wriggles;
while, ancient of daze, grasses on dune-top
dither themselves quite empty-headed,
unable at the last to distinguish at all
the catch, the nets, the sea, the fishers.
...................
The picture is of a little net of at least two kinds of seaweed and some pink hay-bailing fiber to boot, which has little shells and tiny pebbles caught in it. Joy found it on the tideline, itself marvelously in the shape of a leaping fish.
Strong toils -echo of 'Anthony and Cleopatra' Act 2 Scene 5
She looks like sleep,
As she would catch another Antony
In her strong toil of grace.
Shakespeare
'Little backsteps' :- We are moving away from the sun - 15 centimetres a year. Mostly because the sun is burning up mass but also because of the energy used in the tides. Similarly the moon is moving away over a foot a decade due to its part in the tides.
Cuchulain fought with 'the invulnerable tide' (as recounted by Yeats among others) after he had slain his own son in a mix-up. The vile and despicable monster, the Emperor Caligula had his army fight the sea. The fuckwit then declared a victory over Neptune. Knut is King Canute, whose defiance of the tide was really a bit of Christian performance-art to prove himself mortal and God/Nature all powerful - but ironically most people think of him as a vain fool.
