In Memory of Titanic #4

 

 

 

This poem is taken from Jan Dean’s sequence Lullabies for the Dead. The sequence was part of a collaboration with artist Caroline Lea. I was very struck by this poem’s relevance to Titanic, and Jan was kind enough to allow me to post it here. I find it such a tender and gentle, sad poem.

Leaving

the liner is berthed and streamers fly
into warp into weft    bind the ship to the port

long streamers bright streamers
from shipside to harbour
the pilotboat waiting            the pull of the sea

now they ease and shift
the woven sheet shreds     unlaces

and land lets her go
away from the ribbons and wreaths
rising on ripples that run from the wake

white petals drift in slow separation
soft as featherbreath

in a song that rows sweet as a wavetop
pebble and shingle and shellsong
gullcry and windcry

and bell

Jan Dean

Also featured today are three short poems from Alison Brackenbury. These remind me of Hardy’s poems ‘Life’s Little Ironies’. I am grateful to Alison for sending me these vignettes.

 

Titanic’s last tune

No, it was not ‘Nearer my God’-
that heavy guess, proved false.
But ‘Songe d’Automne,’ a pretty little number
which once touched lips with a waltz.

After the Titanic

I did not know about the cries
heard in the lifeboats, out of reach.
No one who heard forgot those cries,
sheer anger, fear and disbelief.

Clause 7 (b)

Now they update
succession laws.
The lawyers let
no errors through.
Titanic’s steps
were
polished
too.

Alison Brackenbury

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