There were gusts at first, a bit of huffing.

Coming from the east it might’ve blown past,

but soon the waves darkened, and lashing about

and around our slight craft, began washing

over the gunwales and pitching the mast,

wearing us out, in heart-wrenching dips and swaths.

And there lofting his gaping mouth again

was the beast, Leviathan, the monster

from the depths of all our fears, made for sport,

you say, but for us terror-struck the end

would come, while astern whom we call master

slept, his legs athwart, on that damn cushion of his.

He rests, while we like drunken sailors lurch

and in panic sicken it is chaos

that triumphs over all our good and games,

of hope and fear, of both/and, the search

among propensities for that not lost

with all our names to the grim and grinning one.

Bailing madly, we shout at it and him:

"Don’t you care that we perish? Rouse yourself,

if you are he who you say you are, Lord."

So now lifting himself off his hard rest,

in peace he creates both sea and wind still,

and all restored, asks of what we are afraid.

Frederick Borsch