We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.*
She dreams the limpid waters of the inlet
they left yesterday, he dreams the gleaming
fish the tide will bring. Through their sleep
move polymorphic creatures of the sea - starfish
stealing shyly through the shallows as the sun
burns low, amethyst medusas set like jewels
on the morning shore, timid pairs of sepia,
camouflaged as mounds of sand, stalked by trident-
bearing fishermen; tentacles of octopus, webless
arachnid of the deep, glimpses of a sublimated
life, a sea-bed of the mind. Submerged in those
protean seas, the island they were loath to leave,
barnacled with monasteries on lonely steeps,
sprinkled with white periwinkle villages in sandy
coves, displaces former iconographies.
Islands live in present time, memory
cannot tarnish them. Obscure amnesia claims
the islomanes. The deep currents of island life
flow on, though separate from their own -
still for days and weeks they will digest
the dream, remembering - how marble flagstones
blossomed in the evening light with soft,
white shapes - the seeming metamorphosis
of stone to breathing, feathered form - sweet
curve of breast, keen arc of wing, angelic
creatures hovering; rich cobalt glaze of cupolas
above the quay, gulls wheeling in the ferry-
curdled waters of the harbour mouth, the plangent
inner chord that marks the voyage out…
*T.S. Eliot, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock"