Mare Nostrum, 1926

By Mark Steudel

Back before the movies could talk,
Back when men still mixed with gods,
Just before Ulysses began to wander . . .

Through the seaweed, the camera panned:
Ship’s carcasses upon the seabed,
The skulls of sailors lying there silently:
“This is what mortality amounts to,”
Said the camera, without saying anything.

With a sense of urgency, life was distilled,
Filtered through to essential sensations,
Not quite life, but life in concentration,
Framing our moments
In a sea’s heavy animation.

And what was it exactly that you spied?
Perhaps a slight narrowing
The circle of the observer’s eye,
For the scene, you say, was intimate.
What exactly she said, who could know,

Except, perhaps, herself, who said
“Ulysses, do not go . . .”

But we already knew the taste for action
That can come with a name.

And so as the day finally began to wane
He rode out off the soft–scudded wave.
The stark, tinted screen skipping a little,
Wavering, as it played its last frame.