Another albatross poem from Dèr Mouw, with echoes of Coleridge and Baudelaire

A stranger to the earth, twixt waves and stars,

the albatross sails on its wide-winged flight,

a dual eternity of air and night

prophesies round its proud and lonely path.

The bird, at home with storm and starry height,

the prudent sailor spares; the other views

its swished-down majesty as farce, and shoos

it, though it saves from shipwreck, into flight.

My love, that storm and starlight greatness gave,

dived at you from the finite’s outer rim;

unsurely steered, your great sails none can trim,

which flutter to bright night where lightnings toss.

Should what is blindly willed break loose, you’re saved

by your unscared off, mystic albatross.