[Jan Iwaszkiewicz]

REVISION

Tied to the Sea


As though they are surprised to be awake,
the wheeling gulls scream devoirs to the dead.
Fish, like gossips, are nosing through the muck,
shags, aping crucifixion, dry their wings,
the ebb is done, the stillstand hesitates.

The oily water rainbows in the light
and dimple-dances with sporadic rain
Scuffed trawlers nod while waiting for the flood.
Strange tidings ache to slew across the flats,
and read what whelks have scribbled in the mud.

The smell of diesel fumes, the breakfast smokes
sucked, hungry, deep with grunts and hawking phlegm,
the easy, liquid speech that flows half-heard.
Cracked hands that talk to nets and pots and lines,
dexterity, their currency of word.

Without my glasses all is pastel tinged
yet what I cannot clearly see, I know
Along the grey of earth-bone harbour wall
the aging, chiselled wounds are lichen scabbed
and plastered with Bill Poster’s free-for-all.

The rusted bollards with their gleaming waists,
the iron burnished by the mooring lines,
the steel-wheeled trolleys waiting for the catch,
the concrete cracked and crazing underfoot,
the coils of mooring line, the brazen rats

and redolence of fish along the wall.
Below, the beat of ocean-blood, the tide,
has turned in gentleness before the rush.
It sheets across the flats, its speed belies
the seeming slowness of the tidal rise.

The harbour holds and breathes the gift of life.
Precise in purpose the slow rush begins
like petals slowly curling out of bud.
Trawlers muscle up on the rising tide,
the day is to be taken on the flood.

The trawlers strain, each eager to be gone.
They slip their lines, wait at the river mouth,
polite in taking turns, they cross the bar.
Roll, pitch and yaw, they carve the standing wave,
and breaking free they head out to the south.

Relaxing now, everything quiets down.
Upstream, beneath the dark cicada drone,
beached on the bend there lies a burned out wreck.
Its hem of black ribs cups a rusted heart.
It’s mine, is me. No sea can wash it clean.





ORIGINAL
Tied to the Sea

As though they are surprised to be awake,
the wheel of gulls scream devoirs to the dead,
fish, like gossips, are nosing through the muck,
shags, aping crucifixion, dry their wings,
the ebb is done, the stillstand hesitates.

The oily water rainbows in the light
and dimple-dances with sporadic rain.
Scuffed trawlers nod while waiting for the flood.
Strange tidings ache to slew across the flats,
and read what whelks have scribbled in the mud.

The smell of diesel fumes, the breakfast smokes,
sucked, hungry, deep with grunts and hawking phlegm,
the easy, liquid speech that flows half-heard.
Cracked hands that talk to nets and pots and lines,
dexterity, their currency of word.

Without my glasses all is pastel edged
yet what I cannot clearly see, I know.
Along the grey of earth-bone harbour wall
the aging, chiselled wounds are lichen scabbed
and plastered with Bill Poster’s free-for-all.

The rusted bollards with their gleaming waists,
the iron burnished by the mooring lines,
the steel-wheeled trolleys waiting for the catch,
the concrete cracked and crazing underfoot,
the coils of mooring line, the brazen rats

and redolence of fish along the wall.
Below, the beat of ocean-blood, the tide,
has turned in gentleness before the rush.
It sheets across the flats, its speed belies
the seeming slowness of the tidal rise.

I watch the trawlers tugging at their lines.
A purpose comes to movement then
as each of them is eager to be gone.
The harbour holds and breathes the gift of life,
my gift is done, I ponder on the when.