Out of My Thousand Voices
Out of my thousand voices
I speak with one
To the waves and flying saltfoam,
Flinging the dovetailed words
Of a single voice
At the knife-edged prow
Of the ship unbreakable
That carries her away.
I throw the one remaining voice
Of all my thousand out to sea
And watch it curving
Into the black-paunched water
Like a falling star,
A single word of love
That drops into the grave,
A thousand echoes falling from her ship.
-Alan Sillitoe, born March 4, 1928 in Nottingham, England
