See the reef people, bodies given over to coral, algae, seagrasses, sheltering conch, crustaceans: boy with a face in his hands, man with a head of branches; history’s dead and the severed heads of oracles, waiting rebukes to the next sales pitch that begins with a story of progress unlimited.
See the men with manes of seagrass, the ships for swimming through, the work of a lifetime to be schooled by fish.
After twenty centuries of stony sleep, what rough beast, its hour come at last, slouches to the shore to be reborn?
***
Inspired by the underwater sculptures of Jason deCaires Taylor. The italicized phrase in the final lines comes from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats.
