Push the boat out, compañeros, <br />push the boat out, whatever the sea. <br />Who says we cannot guide ourselves <br />through the boiling reefs, black as they are, <br />the enemy of us all makes sure of it! <br />Mariners, keep good watch always <br />for that last passage of blue water <br />we have heard of and long to reach <br />(no matter if we cannot, no matter!) <br />in our eighty-year-old timbers <br />leaky and patched as they are but sweet <br />well seasoned with the scent of woods <br />long perished, serviceable still <br />in unarrested pungency <br />of salt and blistering sunlight. Out, <br />push it all out into the unknown! <br />Unknown is best, it beckons best, <br />like distant ships in mist, or bells <br />clanging ruthless from stormy buoys.<br /><br />Edwin Morgan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-eighty/
