Muriel

“Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon

 than their song, namely their silence.”

- Franz Kafka

 

"The sea will have its own.”

- Westcountry Proverb

 

Along the Northern cliffs of Devon
Where the granite dreams of older fire
And the sea gnaws slowly, endlessly,
At the bones of the land—

 

There are coves no chart remembers
And hollows in the tide where currents pause
As though the ocean, in its wandering mind,
Had come upon a thought too ancient to disturb.

 

The fishermen know such waters.

They mark them quietly on the chart
And tell the young ones:
“Don’t cast there. Nothing good comes up.

*Muriel. Origin: Celtic. Meaning: Bright Sea.

They know the places where the nets return
Strangely slack and silverless;

Where the tide pulls inward
As if listening to itself.

 

There, the gulls wheel wide.

 

There, the fog walks inland at dusk
Like some pale pilgrim
That has forgotten the road to heaven.

 

And there—though none will swear it plainly—
A voice has sometimes been heard.

Not singing.

No.

 

The old men shake their heads at that word.

 

For songs belong to living throats
And lungs that breathe the wind.
What rises from those waters
Is something else entirely.

It is as though the sea
Remembers speech.

 

Long ago—so the fragments go—
A cutter crossing the black tide after midnight
Found the bay unquiet in a curious way.

 

The lantern burned.
The wind held steady.

 

Yet the water moved in widening circles
Without cause or storm.

 

A sound then stirred beneath the hull—
Not loud, but patient.

 

The sort of sound
One might hear in dreams of caverns
Where the earth remembers its beginning.

 

A murmur.
A shaping of syllables.

 

And one among the crew, leaning low over the rail,
Whispered that he heard a name
Moving through the tide like breath through teeth.

 

Muriel.

 

After that, the sea became attentive.

The lantern dimmed though no hand touched it.
The ropes creaked softly, as though turning to listen.

 

The water lifted.

 

Not in wave or surge—
But with the dreadful calm of something rising
That has no need for haste.

 

They saw no face.

 

Yet the surface stretched and folded
Like dark silk drawn across a hidden form.
Long strands drifted there—
Weed, perhaps.

 

Or hair.

 

Or something that had learned
To resemble such things.

Again, the sound came.

 

Muriel.

 

And the syllables spread outward through the tide
Until the whole bay seemed full of listening.

 

Then the men began to lean.

 

One stepped to the rail
As if greeting a familiar voice.

Another moved beside him
With the slow obedience of sleepwalkers.

 

No cry was raised.
No struggle troubled the water.

 

They only stepped forward—

And were gone.

 

The sea closed.

 

The lantern flickered.

 

And the cutter drifted in a widening circle
Until dawn found it empty.

 

Since that night, the currents there have changed.

 

The tide enters the bay with peculiar patience,
Turning always toward the same dark hollow
Where the water deepens without warning.

 

Fish avoid it.

 

Even storms pass strangely over it,
As though the wind itself
Had learned discretion.

 

Yet sometimes—

 

When the moon hangs pale and unfinished

And the fog thickens along the cliffs—

A sound rises through the breathing tide.

 

Not a song.

Not quite a voice.

Something older.

 

Something learning again
The delicate machinery of language.

 

It winds through the jagged throat of Hartland Point,

Where the high walls catch the ocean’s sigh

And turn a breath into a summons.
And sometimes—very faintly—
It finds a human shape for its remembering.

 

Muriel.

 

But whether that name belongs
To the thing beneath the water
Or to the sea that speaks it—

 

No living soul has ever learned.

For those who hear it clearly
Lean closer to the tide.

 

And the tide—
Patient as the turning stars—
Receives them

Ever
More.