Is this the device
To restore me to life?
Aside from Time.
Aboard a forecastle,
Transshipping north,
I had for a while complained
On a dead-dream’s galeón
About that empty butter-dish
As a reflection of maritime
Indiscretion and, yes, indiscipline,
When, mizzenmast by mist absorbed,
I observed the strangest
And yet also greatest tactic
For navigating by enemy ships
My mind might ever deploy –
Such naval mastery,
Having praised the artistry
And admired the torsional
Balance of Riggers
With hands as thick
As a goatskin canteen
I recalled as a boy,
Crafted by one zahatogile
Who lived in the hills
Between beautiful old Bilbao
And her sister-ville, Vitoria-Gasteiz,
With the vigour
Of rumours
In human form,
I watched those sailors
See their majestic
Eponymous flaxen cloths
Unfurl like those enormous flags
High above God’s citadel –
I could only marvel, open-mouthed;
My porcelain soup-ladle fell
To the floor with a clunk
Of patterned petuntse on oak,
Oak above ocean
And bitumen stores, and bunks.
I witnessed that pernicious
Enemy approaching,
Those hawkish sea-dogs set
To embed their yellow jaws
Into Iberian hulls,
When with miraculous invention
And a surreptitious detection
The whole, entire ship,
From fore and aft
Ballast and derrick and all
Submerged slowly, deliberately,
Its seaborne form
Into much murkier waters
Until even our crow’s nest
(Which I once sat within
With telescopic lens to check
And did detest that
Vertiginous platform)
Disappeared from sight,
And the royal mast’s tip
With every man and boy
From Powder Monkeys
To a Quartermaster himself,
Sunk and sunk and sunk
Somehow, yes, sunk,
Under the surface
Our seven hundred men
Descended, by what artifice,
By what new science
I had simply no idea.
Time slowed down,
Saturated pumps immersed,
Until the advancing party passed –
Kittiwake-facing adversary –
And our loneliness checked,
Our gallant vessel
Rose triumphantly,
Independently from nature,
No fish in a tricorne,
No whelks in our breath,
All the saltwater pouring
Away from our death,
We sailed on, yes,
Impervious
To our future defeat
And descent, until
The English said
Flavit et Dissipati Sunt,
Our angels translate as
Repent, Repent, Repent.
