Heldensagen

Pop-eye my hero, Everyman my refuge,
Ahab within, mad master of my craft,
My instinct Noah, safest on his wet raft
And only bed-wrecked in the bibulous deluge.

My evening bus seeks out her north-west passage
And I my hero in the comic strip.
In every age the hero has taken ship
Away from the Newer Deal, the Nobler Message.

Commercial travellers’ tales from a slick Munchausen;
Plastic millenniums of the technocrat;
The tribal psychologist pulling out of my hat
His portrait of Mansoul as a bottled abortion;

Admirals with power to organize my search
For Ithaca through this ten years monstrous dream;—
To all Messiahs the same reply, I am
Sinbad and on this Roc you build no church!