East Coast Sea Kayaking Club

ITHAKA

As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you'll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what
these Ithakas mean.

By Constantine Cavafy
Translated by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

maggie and milly and molly and may
went down to the beach (to play one day)

and maggie discovered a shell that sang
so sweetly she couldn’t remember her troubles,and

milly befriended a stranded star
whose rays five languid fingers were;

and molly was chased by a horrible thing
which raced sideways while blowing bubbles:and

may came home with a smooth round stone
as small as a world and as large as alone.

For whatever we lose (like a you or a me)
it’s always ourselves we find in the sea

e.e. cummings

Seal Lullaby

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,
And black are the waters that sparkled so green.
The moon, o’er the combers, looks downward to find us
At rest in the hollows that rustle between.
Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;
Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!
The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,
Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

Rudyard Kipling

That poem by Kipling is wonderful.

WILD GEESE

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Great thread, Emer.

A 10th cent. Irish monastic poem, translated by Kuno Meyer, which has travelled with me farther than the old monks imagined. From The Pilgrim Suite by Shaun Davey, sung by Iarla O'Lionaird (in the 10th cent. first official language), with Liam O'Flynn on uilleann pipes. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gN2OPIzlxYo

The Pilgrim

Shall I go, O King of the Mysteries,
after my fill of cushions and music,
to turn my face on the shore
and my back on my native land?

Shall I be in poverty in battle
Through the death of the King, who does not fail,
without great honour or a famous chariot,
without silver, gold, without a horse?

Without heady drink that intoxicates a throng,
without a stout tribe, without men to protect me,
without a swift shield or any weapon,
without cup, ale, or drinking horn?

Without soft clothes that are pleasant to look at,
without cushions which are no friend of any saint,
but beech-twigs of virtue
under a hard quilt for my body?

Shall I say a long farewell
to the great island of the sons of proud Mil?
Shall I offer myself under Christ's yoke
before I cross the waters of the Red Sea?

Shall I cut my hand with every sort of wound
on the breast of the wave which wrecks boats?
Shall I leave the track of my two knees
on the strand by the shore?

Shall I take my little black currach
over the broad-breasted glorious ocean?
O King of the bright kingdom,
shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

Whether I be strong or poor,
or mettlesome so as to be recounted in tales,
O Christ, will you help me
when it comes to going upon the wild sea?