539. FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY

FOR CAPTAIN MARBURY
I dog the coastline, seeking whatever
arises - things sticking out of the mud,
broken wheels where once a carriage ran.
Silhouettes and noon-time shadows, both
indifferent to each other, spend each their
moments in the sun. Alike. Apart.
A wailing cat in a similitude of grief.
-
They say once a great liner foundered here.
Burned and tipped; dropped its bastard
cargo a mile from the shore. The blaze - seen
for miles around - scorched everything. Its people,
their bags, their pets and all cargo too.
Only the Captain and crew, walking somehow
on fiery water, managed to survive,
arriving onshore to tell their insane tale.
-
No one for a moment believed a word :
virgins with balls of fire on their hands,
starting fires with their eyes; timid
travelers, singing of Trieste and of
the Hapsburgs, tying things down with
strings; mountains of red mud,
falling down, straight, from the sky.
All fantastic, and all thought a lie.
-
The Captain died, a lonely man, some
twenty-five years later still huddled in
his grief. Fear was his only daughter,
and sorrow was her cloak. They'd
let him live, if only to suffer more.
-
A public story of such great import
gets told over and anew. We read it
in history's reports, as arrow-like, it
pierces our dreams - part of our
unconscious noise, still, a
hundred years on.