I wrote this poem while writing my novel This Sea Within about love and war in Central America. I wrote it in the voice and style of a 19th century Latin American poet about the ceaseless, ongoing struggles that have ravaged his land since before the Conquistadors. As they have been going on in what we now call Ukraine since the Vikings plundered tribal villages, before the Mongols came and slaughtered all of them. As they were going on now in what was once known a Philistia, Canaan, and Persia before they became Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran.

This poem speaks to the ceaseless cycles of peace and plunder that haunt our histories and our hearts, but also to the spirit of the people who weather such storms.

I shared this poem on this site in 2022, and since then it’s gone through several revisions. The one below is its latest.

I shared it then, as I do now, in honor of the brave spirit of the Ukrainian people and so many others who are weathering this storm today.

Following the poem is an excerpt from the novel related to this poem.

This Sea Within All Things

This sea that lies within all things,
All bodies, minds, soaring hearts and grasping hands.
This ceaseless stirring, this Siren’s call, these turbulent thoughts
And listless rhythms that know no end.
This urgent quest.

This sea, pouring through the ages and across continents
In endless cycles of peace and plunder,
Plunder and peace,
Ever restless, relentless.

This sea that it throws itself upon our shores, heaving
Boulders and breaking cliffs,
Leaving in its wake the detritus of society and small broken things.
A child’s bracelet, an empty bottle.
Shattered shells and battered lives.
Faces searching through the wreck like flies through stranded seaweed.

Then, when all is lost, this sea, unbroken in its vastness, spreads out
Like a calm comforting blanket of blue.
Its lacy traces wash our feet and whisper sweet secrets in our ears,
Seducing us with dreams of endless pleasure.
Its tender kisses everywhere.
Its mesmerizing music everywhere.
Children romp among its waves like playful porpoises,
Safe as sand.

And so it lures and soothes and laments
Before lashing out, breaking
Whole continents apart,
Leaving all in ruin.

O drowning heart, O vale of tears
O lovers lost, and sons and daughters,
Be not dismayed.
As ceaseless as the sea’s turmoil is the spirit that rides upon it
And survives to rise again.

Savor the sun’s sweet kisses and balmy breezes,
Hold them close, don’t let go.
Even when the broad drowning seas rise up and crash down,
Do not despair.
Tis the way of weather.
And of weathered hearts and leathered minds,
Of grasping hands, and the sons of man.

So we lay our hearts and histories
Upon such shores as storms do rage
And retreating bare all to see
Such luster still in the strong arms and stalwart hearts
Of souls long lost.

When all that’s left of mighty ships’ splintered rails
And torn sails sink below, we wait to rise
Once more. Once more.

By Deborah J. Brasket, 2026

Lena Landon, the young American protagonist in my novel, is on a plane heading toward a war-torn country in Central America in 1971. On the plane she’s been reading the history of Latin America starting with the conquistadors and the destruction of two major civilizations that persisted for 3500 years until Cortez arrived.

The history continues with ongoing struggles of so many countries in Central America to become independent nations, and then to break the hold of one brutal dictator after another, each propped up by the United States after the Monroe Doctrine went into effect.

The constant civil wars and guerrilla warfare in the region, and her own country’s involvement in that, is disheartening, to say the least, to the young, idealistic woman.

But then she reads the poem This Sea Within by one of the most cherished poets from that region which speaks to this very condition of constant strife. Surprisingly, it heartens her.

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER 4

Lena snags another window seat and pulls from her backpack that book of poetry she put aside earlier. Something to get lost in or put her asleep, and it does both by equal measure in the miles and hours that follow.

Ramon Fernandez, according to the introduction, is someone who “captures the history of the land and lays its bare bones and beating heart at our feet. The music of San Balanque’s seas and forests, the yearning of its people, the eroticism of its primal past, and the ecstasy of its soaring spirit are all woven into his elegiac verses.”

As Lena turns the pages, the chatter around her and the rumble of the engines fall away. She becomes immersed in the vivid imagery and waves of emotion rising from black print moving across white pages in a steady, relentless, intoxicating stream.

The first poem she reads, “This Sea Within All Things,” opens with refrains that echo so much of Lena’s own sense of restless yearning.

[The poem is inserted here in small chunks, rather than the whole thing as shown above. When she finishes . . .]

Lena puts the open book face-down in her lap and lets the melancholy refrains and images wash through her. It reflects so much of what she’s been reading all morning, the constant warfare and clash of civilizations. But it’s distilled in a way that doesn’t leave her feeling desolate or hopeless, as the histories did. Instead, she feels stronger, more measured, more capable of withstanding whatever struggles come her way.

She reads another poem and another, each sweet and sorrowful, sensual and strong. Lena finds she’s drifting in and out of sleep as she reads, enveloped by a dreamlike drowsiness when she wakes and a poetic landscape when she slumbers. It’s like she’s in some weird fever-dream. And she doesn’t know whether the images and words that rise in her mind come from her reading or her dreams.

The runway flashes by her in a blur as they land. Something momentous is about to happen. She feels it. She’s been whisked away from her old life and is about to be dropped into something explosive, overwhelming, surreal. She struggles to find strands of her old self to hold onto as she steps off the plane, even while, at the same time, she wants to become undone and remade anew.

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