of the Deutschland,
in a letter, Hopkins wrote
his friend: read it again, and send
me no more bilge-water, by which
he meant, “criticism,”
your ignorant criticism,
your brute unwillingness
to understand, when I
need for you, most of all,
you, to understand.
But also, something softer:
how on a ship, the water in a cask,
the water in the bilge,
will settle over time, will fructify
with stillness, until the water
of the Thames becomes
a lambent thing, sweet as rainwater,
sweeter than rainwater,
older, unrivered, rich,
the sediment and trash
all settled out,
not mud and offal
but the water’s glass
and mirror in a cask—
how even ignorance,
your gross, ungrateful ignorance,
resolves itself
like that through time,
grows sweeter through
the long enforcing
absence of the sea.