Relic
I found this jawbone at the sea's edge: There, crabs, dogfish, broken by the breakers or tossed To flap for half an hour and turn to a crust Continue the beginning. The deeps are cold: In that darkness camaraderie does not hold. Nothing touches but, clutching, devours. And the jaws, Before they are satisfied or their stretched purpose Slacken, go down jaws; go gnawn bare. Jaws Eat and are finished and the jawbone comes to the beach: This is the sea's achievement; with shells, Verterbrae, claws, carapaces, skulls. Time in the sea eats its tail, thrives, casts these Indigestibles, the spars of purposes That failed far from the surface. None grow rich In the sea. This curved jawbone did not laugh But gripped, gripped and is now a cenotaph.
Relic - meaning Summary
Hunger Beneath the Surface
The poem uses a jawbone washed ashore to imagine the sea as a harsh closed system of feeding, death, and decay. Beneath the surface, creatures survive by consuming one another, and their remains eventually return as bones and shells. The jawbone becomes a cenotaph, a memorial to a life defined by its grip and hunger, while the sea appears indifferent to every individual purpose.
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