I propose, with a steady voice, to declaim in loudest tones the cold and sober offering you are about to hear

Pay heed to what it contains and beware of the painful impact, it will not fail to leave like a blight on your disordered imaginations

Do not believe I am on the verge of death, even though I might very well be

For I am not yet a skeleton and old age cleaves not to my brow, and yet it starts taking the role of an unwanted companion

Now we consequently wave aside any idea of comparison with the swan of golden origin at the moment when its life flies off

And before you, behold a mere monstrosity whose face I am glad you cannot see

But the face is less horrible than the spirit

Not long ago I saw the sea again and trod the decks of ships and my memories are as fresh as if I'd left the sea only yesterday

Nevertheless, if you can, on listening to what I already regret offering you

Be as calm as I and do not blush at the thought of what the human heart is

He who has born witness the founding of a ship in the eye of a storm

By the brilliance of light, he alternates with the most profound darkness

And the storms abroad and the curse of despair you know so well

Knows nothing of the tragedy of life

Imagine a grand commercial ship commanded by extending from the vessel's very hull, while the sea relentlessly increases the assault

A crowd beautifully embodies human strength, leaving him to its demise, while each man folds himself in the dark resignation and commits his soul into the hands of God

A beautiful partnership, clinging together like a flock of sheep

While the distressed ship roars tunes of anguish and majestically she sets into the dark

Spirit of the silken glance, your soul is inseparable from mine

Most handsome inhabitant of the sphere that you call yours

In you are nobly enthroned, by common consent and perennial bond

The sweet virtue of every grace and divine communion

Why were you not with me?

Your quicksilver belly against my breast of aluminum

Both of us seated on some rock by the shore

To meditate upon this spectacle I adore

Old ocean, with your crystal waves, you resemble the icy pale lines

An unfortunate soul might be given a swift distorted glimpse upon

After having spent hours, days, and months

At the mercy, if one wants to call it so, of their torturer

You are a colossal azure bruise slapped on the body of Earth

At first sight of you, a long drawn out sigh of sadness

Of sadness

That one might believe to be the murmur of your mellow breeze

Passes over the deeply disturbed esprit

The deeply disturbed esprit

Leaving harrowing scars for the ages

As you remind your lovers

Though they don't always bear it in mind

Of man's crude origins, when he became acquainted with the sorrow that is never to desert him

Your harmoniously spherical form that rejoices the grave face of geometry

Reminds me overmuch of man's tiny eyes

Akin to the peccaries in minuteness and to those of the nightbirds

In their circular perfection of contour

In their circular perfection of contour

Yet down the ages man has deemed himself beautiful

Oh, so ignorant of his excruciating peradventure, so adversarial towards that ravishing divineness of yours

Old ocean, you are the symbol of identity

Always equal unto yourself

In essence, you never change, even with waves in a deuce of a stir somewhere

Farther off you're in absolute and complete tranquility

You are not like man, who stops in the streets with delight to watch two deadbeats tearing each other apart

But does not stop when a funeral passes

Who does not bat an eyelash in the finite face of extinction?

In the finite face of extinction

Who in the morning is affable yet in the evening ill-humoured?

Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow?

Who laughs today and weeps tomorrow?

Who loves today and hates tomorrow?