Reading

No.26

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Reader
Zeb Soanes + Cleo Silvestre
Radio announcer + Actress
Recorded in Canonbury, London

Artwork
Serena Korda
Zuben Elgenubi - The Price to be Paid
Film, 19 mins

First Voice
'But tell me, tell me! speak again,
Thy soft response renewing—
What makes that ship drive on so fast?
What is the ocean doing?'

Second Voice
Still as a slave before his lord,
The ocean hath no blast;
His great bright eye most silently
Up to the Moon is cast—

If he may know which way to go;
For she guides him smooth or grim.
See, brother, see! how graciously
She looketh down on him.'

First Voice
'But why drives on that ship so fast,
Without or wave or wind?'

Second Voice
'The air is cut away before,
And closes from behind.

Fly, brother, fly! more high, more high!
Or we shall be belated:
For slow and slow that ship will go,
When the Mariner's trance is abated.'

The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign disappears. Ah, sir; live, live in the bosom of the waters. There only is independence. There I recognise no master's voice. There I am free.

Jules Verne,
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1870

To the romantic, that is, childhood is over, its island is astern, and there is no other. The only possible place of peace now lies under the waters.

W.H. Auden,
The Enchafèd Flood, 1949