“BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS IF NOT DUFFERS WONT DROWN”

[larryhammer]

Poetry Monday, something I would have posted for a Sea Poetry Monday if I'd known of it:

Shoals, Stephen Scaer

The screeching oak planks and the sudden shock
announce the gale has pushed them too far east,
trapping the whaler on a hidden rock –
the broken molar of a howling beast.
She’s listing port. He knows what he should do:
furl sails and cut the masts before she tips,
supply and board the boats. Then what? The crew
awaits the first command from his pursed lips.
At best they’ll reach Tahiti. Odds are narrow
they’ll find it, though. He braces for the worst:
short straws, scraped femurs cracked to suck the marrow,
exposure, madness, all-consuming thirst,
until their blood congeals and sets them free.
He grasps the rail and stares into the sea.

---L.

Subject quote from Swallows and Amazons, Arthur Ransome.

Comments

[sovay]

He grasps the rail and stares into the sea.

This is wonderful. How did you find it?

[larryhammer]

An LJ community, actually.

[sovay]

An LJ community, actually.

Cool!

[cmcmck]

A powerful piece.

Leaves me thinking of Franklin and the 'Erebus' and 'Terror'.

[larryhammer]

Yeah. I want to know whether there's a specific historical wreck behind this.

[ranunculus]

I would like this poem better if it were not by a very modern poet. It is unlikely in the extreme that such a issue would face a "whaler" in modern days, so the sentiment, rather than being the expression of working fear, is only deliberate attempt to manipulate the audience's emotions. A manipulation cloaked in history.

Just received "Ice Melts". We ordered it from a local bookstore.

[larryhammer]

I was thinking of it as a (very compressed) work of historical fiction. I don't think I would have that reaction, that it's an attempt to manipulate me, if the scene were presented in a historical novel -- at least, as long as it wasn't too obviously sentimental/melodramatic/other-failure-mode.

Yay -- I hope you like it. (And good to know that stores are indeed able to get it.)