Let it come. Why should you hold back that power
When you know you must truly mirror the gale?
What if you are only a fiction, a shadow —
A figment, a phantom flying illusory sails?
You are numinous opposite of Noah,
Doomed never to land, descried on all seas,
Glimpsed pale in terror twixt flashes of lightning,
A mountain of water boiling over your masts.
Let the wind shriek through you, let the fantastic
Desire to cut through every snarling white crest
Drive you over the cries of the shipwrecked and dying.
For you see it clearly, the impossible cape
Of fools who think they have rounded it
Forever,…
Richard O’Connell’s ‘The Flying Dutchman’
