Ancient mariner 2004

Pencil drawings on A3 notebook paper

Artist's collection, Sydney

Image source: Samuel Coleridge poem:
Rime of the anient mariner, 1798

While traveling by plane at night
over the Pacific Ocean,
I drew as I read Coleridge's
Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

The sun came up upon the left,
Out of the sea came he!
And he shone bright,
and on the right
Went down into the sea ...
(Coleridge, 1798).

I drew the circling
of the sun around the Earth,
the ship crossing the globe,
and the albatross shot
by the mariner's cross bow.

From the air,
the ocean below appeared black
against land lit up by many cities.
Coleridge's image of the circular Earth
brought to mind its unity and wholeness.
The cross of the ship
and the bird that was shot
brought to mind
human indifference to the sea.