Some of the best talk I ever had

Was with a deaf old near-sighted wrestler who had been to sea,

And made ship-models for a living, and didn't say much.

I was a small boy, I stared. I hung around his shop after school.

He was very deaf, and it made a good silence for me to think in.

He spoke once or twice in an hour. He whittled out whale-boats, peering.

Good," he would say, with a sharp knife and the wood near his nose.

When he held it to the window, I could see light through the boat's bows.

Damn," he'd say, if he dropped his knife, no tone, a deaf "Damn."

I'd be learning the shapes of ships from big slippery magazines,

Or I'd be turning crinkly blueprints and deck-plans, unrolling the rolls,

Using his tack-hammers and wood-scraps to make them lie flat.

Oh, and there once I saw

Alone with him one dim afternoon

The strict thin purposeful lines

On the flat plan, soar, live, sail,

Deck above deck, mast over deck, flag

Topping mast, and knew what he knew while he whittled.

What he said, he said with his hundreds of tools, sharp, meaningful,

Red-handled, a blade for every cut, a drill-size for everything.

He talked, I mean I knew what he was saying,

When he pushed the white pine planks into the power-saw

To cut out the rough curved layers he built up into hulls,

Then planed, whittled, sand-papered, rubbed with stub fingers into ships.

Then he painted them green under the waterline, or bronze;

Then he rigged them, he sewed sails for them finer than a handkerchief.

He could paint pictures, too,

Another way of talking; ships of the line, water-colors in red and blue,

Tacked on the shop walls above rubbish and bright tools and lumber.

He cast his own anchors, cannon, blocks; I fingered the moulds;

I breathed smells he made of hot metal, of oil, glue, sawdust, turpentine,

I smelled the color of the paint, I heard the shavings curl, a way of listening.

My pulse was the beat of the idle belts on the shafting, a way of talking.

I made believe I walked the decks, hung in the main-tops, rode

The piling swell of the green seas in the bowsprit chains.

I stared up from the afterdeck at the huge flowing balance, the color,

The riding cloud above me of sails, flags, rigging, masts, and sky.

What are you doing now?" he would say, and I did not answer.

I've seen his ships sailing in glass cases in the great museums.

I still make believe. I still stare. I'm there

On the small perfect decks perfectly empty; up out of the crew's hatchway

I climb to take my turn at the night-watch in the bow.

He's there, too. That's why he built them, I think now.

It's a special thing, building them, collecting them, making believe.

But I understand why it's good. He told me.

I wouldn't have known that you throw work away

When you spoil it half-done. I guessed that he guessed

Like a cook with a cookbook sometimes, one look at the blue-prints

And three at the wood. I wouldn't have known that.

I wouldn't have known that however you build it,

The ship must sail; you can't explain to the ocean.

But the pure grain of the wood achieving shape under tools,

The masts long like flower-stems, the spars tapered,

The blunt round of the bows of the finger-length whale-boats,

Smooth-dusty from sandpapering, no paint yet, the wood-

That was the best talk.

I remember the words of the wood, and his grimed quick fingers

Telling truth with a knife, reaching for the other tools,

Knowing his need, and the grain of the wood knowing.

Have you seen the most beautiful of all ships?

Not the clipper, the whaler, the yacht, the gray battle-cruiser,

It isn't the galley with banked oars, or the shouldering galleon.

It's the East Indiaman, four decks, and flaring with flags,

All the rails mahogany, the figurehead carven and colored, plunging,

The captain's gallery all windows at the great stern,

And the mountains of sail, the enormous lift of the long decks.

A castle, a country sailing, so proud, so golden and slow and proud.

He was an old man when I knew him, deaf and bad eyes.

He wore a gray sweater, and a very old cap, always.

What have you been doing, John?" he would say, every day.

And I would say nothing. He couldn't hear.

Do you know what this is I am making?"

I knew what he was making, even before it seemed to be.

I could hear. I could make believe. I could see.

He always had half a dozen ships on the bench, thinking them into shape.

He hummed, whittled, peered, swore, studied blueprints.

It was some of the best talk I ever had.