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For a Girl Killed at Sea

By Calvin Thomas Jr. Calvin Thomas

I see the ships, the plotted crash,

The stateroom’s purgatory trash,

The waiting wedged and still no splash.

There is the torch that burns not through

Unless it drowns the sailor crew

Shoring the bulkhead pinning you.

And then the priest who, being ill,

Intones through steel the bitter pill:

This tomb is your last confession grille.

I think of you awake in bed,

Praying what all the voyage said:

Have done with dying and be dead.

It is a pride in loneliness

Like some propriety of dress

That shuns the water meant to bless;

My hand as from a magnet pole

Works to the Sunday dipping bowl

To spot my tie and cross my soul.

“For a Girl Killed at Sea” by Calvin Thomas Jr. Used by permission of the author.

Source: Poetry (October 1955).

Biography

Calvin Thomas Jr. was a promising young poet at Yale when, during the summer of his sophomore year, he attended John Crowe Ransom’s summer school at Kenyon College. There he met influential New Critics like Allen Tate, Mark Shorer, and Yvor Winters, who would later become a mentor. He graduated from Yale in 1951, joined the Air Force, and was sent to Germany. His story “The Comeback,” which sprang from his experience . . .

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