Looking Out to Sea

UNDER the bluegreen surface of the sea
Something endures. Water so deep and wide,
So little ruffled by a change of tide,
Looks almost self-contained, almost as pure

As the blue air it merges into past
The outer islands or that spit of land
The eye takes sidelong in — Blake’s grain of sand
That blurs the sight but makes illusion clear,

A rainbow augury of what the globe
(Less land than icy water still, and snow)
Will look like when the polar cap lets go,
And fishes, houses, cattle, sticks, are swirled

Centripetal around the solid core
A hundred fathoms down, too far to touch. . . .
The visionary eye that sees so much,
The centrifuge, spins outward from the shore.