Transatlantic Crossing, by Jane Wiseman

The Last Look of John Donne, by Marsden Hartley (USA) 1940

​Transatlantic Crossing
Marsden Hartley paints John Donne in his shroud
 
If an ocean-going liner traveling at let’s say
twenty-three knots not fast enough quite to win
the Blue Riband crosses the path of the
 
           They stood out from the bay at five o’clock
           in the light of dawn entered by eight close after
           he witnessed from the deck some galleon
           commanded by Devereaux or maybe de Vere
 
                       Let’s say Nicholas Stone worked from a
                       drawing of Donne in his shroud then awkward
                       Martin Droeshout tried an engraving it’s just fact
                       the statue itself survived the Great Fire stands
                       now at St. Paul’s 
 
Let’s say this shy young man gay diffident retiring
beneath Mount Katahdin The Painter of Maine dies
quietly alone before he does let’s say traveling a
contemplative 2mph but halting at shore at mountain to
observe let’s say crosses the path of the man
 
           Who knowing death approaches takes to his
           shroud and won’t get out of it let’s say a man
           marked by the perishing away of Henry his brother
           dead in Newgate for his faith let’s say a man who abjured
           that faith and took another let’s say a man who loved
           one woman his whole life fought for his king let’s say
           a man convinced of his sin but forced anyway into
           holy orders becomes the most celebrated preacher of his
 
                                       Let’s say these two cross paths over
                                       the Atlantic over the centuries let’s say
                                       they do let’s say no calculation parses the place 
                                       where the two of them burst each one from his point
                                       Euclidean primitive notion to the intersection that holds up 
                                       the world. Let’s say if they did not the world would collapse on itself.
                                       Let’s say it would.

Jane Wiseman

Jane Wiseman is a writer who splits her time between very urban Minneapolis and the Sandia Mountains of New Mexico. She paints, too.

John Donne in His Shroud, by Martin Droeshout (England) 1633