The leading minds of the age all wondered amongst
themselves what I would do next,
After all that I’d found in my travels around
the world, was there anything left?
“Gentlemen,” I said, “I’ve studied the maps,
and if what I am thinking is right,
there’s another new world at the top of the world
for those who can break through the ice.”
I looked round the room in the way I once had,
and I saw that they wanted belief.
So I said, “All I’ve got are my guts and my God,”
then I paused. “And the Annabelle Lee.”
Oh the Annabelle Lee, I saw their eyes shine.
The most beautiful ship on the sea.
My Nina, My Pinta, My Santa Maria,
My beautiful Annabelle Lee.
That spring I set sail, the crowds waved from shore,
And on board, the crew waved their hats.
But I never had family, just the Annabelle Lee,
So I never had cause to look back.
I just set the course north, and studied the charts
until towards dark, I drifted to sleep.
And I dreamed of the fine deep harbor I’d find,
past the ice for my Annabelle Lee.
After that it colder, and the world got quiet.
It was never quite day or quite night.
The sea turned the color of sky turned the color
of sea turned the color of ice.
Til at last, all around us was fastness,
one vast glassy desert of arsenic white,
and the waves that once lifted us sifted instead
into drifts against Annabelle’s side.
And the crew gathered closer, at first for the comfort
but each morning would bring a new set
of tracks in the snow leading over the edge
of the world til I was the only one left.
After that it gets cloudy, but it feels like I lay there
for days, maybe for months.
But Annabelle held me, the two of us happy
just to think back on all that we’d done.
We talked of the other worlds we’d discover
as she gave up her body to me.
As I chopped up her mainsail for timber
I told her of all that we still had to see.
And as the frost turned her moorings to nine-tails,
and the wind lashed her sides in the cold,
I burned her to keep me alive every night
In the lover’s embrace of her hold.
And I won’t call it rescue what brought me here back
to the old world to drink and decline,
and pretend that the search for another new world
was well worth the burning of mine.
But sometimes at night, in my dreams comes the singing
of some unknown tropical bird.
And I smile in my sleep, thinking Annabelle Lee
has finally made it to another new world.
