The Poems of Exile: Tristia and the Black Sea Letters Book

Every word you've read in this whole book was written
during the anxious days
of my journey: scribbling lines in mid-Adriatic
while December froze the blood,
or after we'd passed the twin gulfs of the Isthmus
and transferred to another ship,
still verse-making amid the Aegean's savage clamour
(a sight, I fancy, that shook the Cyclades).
In fact, I'm surprised myself that in all that upheaval
of spirit and sea inspiration never flagged.
How to label such an obsession? Shocked stupor? Madness?
No matter: by this one care all cares are relieved.
Time and again I was tossed by wintry tempests
and darkly menacing seas;
time and again the day grew black with storm-clouds,
torrents of wind-lashed rain;
time and again we shipped water; yet my shaky
hands still kept writing verses - of a sort.
Now winds whistle once more through the taut rigging,
and massy-high rears up each hollow wave:
the very steersman, hands raised high to heaven,
his art forgotten, turns to prayer for aid.
Wherever I look, there's nothing but death's image -
death, that my split mind fears
and, fearing, prays for. Should I come safe to harbour
terror lurks there too: more hazards on dry land
than from the cruel sea. Both men and deep entrap me,
sword and wave twin my fear:
sword, I'm afraid, hopes to let my blood for booty,
wave wants the title of my death. Away
on our left lies a barbarous coast, inured to rapine,
stalked every by bloodshed, murder, war -
the agitation of these wintry waves is nothing
to the turbulence in my breast.
All the more cause for indulgence, generous reader,
if these lines fall short - as they do -
of your hopes: they were not written, as formerly, in my garden,
while I lounged on a favourite day-bed, but at sea,
in wintry light, rough-tossed by filthy weather, spindrift
spattering the paper as I write.
Rough winter battles me, indignant at my presumption
in ignoring its fierce threats, still scribbling away.
Let the storm have its will of the man - but let storm and poem
reach their end, I pray, each at the same time!