Sea Mark

“Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt,
And very sea-mark of my utmost sail.”

Is this the Moor, steering his vessel North,
a tenured look-out, peering at the sea?

A magus, solemn in his stony skirts,
topped with a priestly cape of sealing-wax?

Has he leaped down from frost and ice
to guide the lonely mariner, or mislead?

A candle with a stubby wick, a firework
or a perfumed bomb, innocently primed?

Or a work of art, the simulacrum
of a seaman’s reference point,

painted as a joke with one or two
unwanted tins of matt and gloss?