Exiled

Searching my heart for its true sorrow,
This is the thing I find to be:
That I am weary of words and people,
Sick of the city, wanting the sea;

Wanting the sticky, salty sweetness
Of the strong wind and shattered spray;
Wanting the loud sound and the soft sound
Of the big surf that breaks all day.

Always before about my dooryard,
Marking the reach of the winter sea,
Rooted in sand and dragging drift-wood,
Straggled the purple wild sweet-pea;

Always I climbed the wave at morning,
Shook the sand from my shoes at night,
That now am caught beneath great buildings,
Stricken with noise, confused with light.

If I could hear the green piles groaning
Under the windy wooden piers,
See once again the bobbing barrels,
And the black sticks that fence the weirs,

If I could see the weedy mussels
Crusting the wrecked and rotting hulls,
Hear once again the hungry crying
Overhead, of the wheeling gulls,

Feel once again the shanty straining
Under the turning of the tide,
Fear once again the rising freshet,
Dread the bell in the fog outside,—

I should be happy,—that was happy
All day long on the coast of Maine!
I have a need to hold and handle
Shells and anchors and ships again!

I should be happy, that am happy
Never at all since I came here.
I am too long away from water.
I have a need of water near.


I thought it was time for an ocean poem. Millay grew up on the ocean in northern Maine but she lived most of her adult life travelling and settled in upstate New York with Boissevain. Her description of the sounds, smells and sights of a fishing village are so real and evocative, it makes me feel that I am there with her, and I can almost hear the gulls and smell the salt water. Her declaration the she "has a need to hold and handle/shells and anchors and ships again!" is so decisive it is a call to rush to the beach! I also love the way she begins this poem, trying to found out why she feeling sad and realizing that past all of these daily cares, the true reason for her depression is distance from the ocean. I think that many people can relate to that feeling of being most alive when you are near the ocean, whether it be Pacific, Atlantic or any other!