Kurofune 黒船 (The Dark Ships)

Nightly, let’s swallow the sun’s light

To reignite reefs of crystal; radiant

nights luminescing into our dreams

Of star-silver fish in seas of socialism.

'Fisher-father, who nets me in treasons,

I swim beyond your bullying reason;

The whale-kind holds me in ocean eyes

An echoes to the politicing of Proteus.

My currents, my curious kami tentacles,

Shamelessly shaping into violences,

Wave on wave of slave broken bodies;

Rootlessly torn free on these eddies.'

Umi, thalassa, word-desired daughters

Who pour from your primal clear waters

In energies of inequality; ‘Look, kurofune 黒船

Break the black ships, drown our chains!’

We, the stubborn seas

Who circle endlessly,

Without you’s or me’s.

(Cavtat, Croatia - August 2018)

Notes:

kurofune (黒船) are the 'black ships'. This was the name given by the Japanese to European ships arriving in the 16th century.

kami (神) are the spirits of the Japanese Shinto philosophy.