What broke my sleep-spell was my daughter’s night-cry. I brought her to bed so she could sleep next to me and her mother. At 4am the birds were raucous. My daughter was not quite two. She whispered into my ear, “Rock-a-my baby,” and then: “Our founders are skeletons. Englishmen drilled down to be sure. Beneath our atolls, deeper than any drill-bit, is ‘the large house under the sea’. A current surrounds us, pulls us down to our own ancient history. Do not be sad, Dad.”

Coral on top of subsiding coral rock, volcanic rock; coral rock carries dead coral down. Another volcanic movement: the Royal Society of London pushes the coral back up. British drill bits show shallow water organisms fossilised in coral fathoms deep. David’s drill bit, 1911, drills deep but is unable to reach the volcanic base. From the bore hole: hear how old our language is.

There is a pier underwater. When it’s only just submerged, watch barnacles bugle their mouths out. Stand with your feet flat on the pier. Water swirls around your calves as if you’ve stepped into a shallow pool. On either side of you and at the end of the pier is the ocean and it is deep. Some decades, the ocean rises, and it’s as if there is no pier. This is the pier the boys lead their make-ships along.

Ships that are baby bathtubs, that are buckets, that are Styrofoam coolers. Make ships with scraps of wood, of doorless refrigerators, from bicycle tires. Every year restless boys take their make-ships to the end of the sunken pier. To go. To “New Zealand.” To “America.” They have no sense of the size of the world. They float away in coffins.

From “the large house” swims a “big whale.” A “black whale.” A whale with wings flat against its size. A whale as much as a blackbird. A whale stuck with harpoons, wrought iron reminders, lines fly behind. Its memory is a noise of moments, its insides “the light of day.” One hundred years ago the whale tricked the people of our country and swallowed all our men. This was recorded by Christian missionaries. What powers its swim is slavery. We do not speak of this event, but our children all play a game with rope.

My daughter woke up again at seven, not with a cry but a bright call to open the “drapes”. I struggled, sleepy—the stories that she whispered to me—the stories my daughter whispers in my sleep. She stood at the head of the bed and shook the curtains, threads bright with sun. I knelt beside her, reached over the headboard and pushed apart the curtains. Outside, there was no lawn, or street—no land. My wife, asleep, her glasses on the nightstand, the nightstand no longer at arm’s reach, but bobbing away on the floorboards. And oh I’m anything but sad.