Cargo vessel
On a millpond sea inky black
Reflecting stars in all their celestial
Magnificence,
The container vessel MSC Mercury Thora Hird,
Hulking, it’s behemoth hull
Silent as a ghost
Ploughing between continents with
Crates of tat,
Plastic merchandise, dodgy exports.
I creep past creaking metal boxes,
Alone,
For it is a sultry night,
The hot metal deck throbbing,
Equatorial,
Towering containers intersecting,
Stacked upwards all angular,
Forming skyscrapers and city blocks,
Grid iron walkways,
An imaginary city
With a population of one.
And the breeze
Which whistles through.
I find a private place,
A rectangular courtyard of my own
Near the bow, stark,
That I might lay here
Surrounded by right angles
And commune with the sighing wind.
Deep powerful engines
Throb through me
Pulsing their diesel propulsion
As I stretch out flat on the deck
Coated thick sigh non slip paint
The stars above unmoving
The universe
So soothing.
Where have you been?
– Right here.
What brought you back?
– Why not?
What is the mystery of your life?
– That I should exist at all.
Are you Marcel Proust?
– Yeeeeees.
The sea heaves like a breath exhaled.
Containers groan with obviousness.
Stars in all their beautiful magnificence,
Omniscient.
-I bit the Madeleine.
And things were never the same.
I threw it all away
I think of you every day.
– I think of you
I think of us.
I think of the
Baron de Charlus.
What are you doing here?
– It might be that I stop clocks
Like that time
At the Shanghai Docks.
Didn’t I see you
By the light of the moon?
– Off the coast
Of Cameroon.
Down in the boiler room?
– My heart went boom.
Titty boom.
Titty boom.
Nights in lonely cabins.
My formative years at navel college
The whole time
Gazing at my belly button.
Then an apprenticeship
On a battleship
Learning the ropes
On the HMS Hindrance,
Lonely bunks and
Shirtless hunks
Dockside manners and
Gangplank dreams
A life surrounded
By seamen.
-Dance with me
To the music of movement
We all carry baggage
And various cargoes
Dance with me
To the memory
I’m serious
Delirious
Dance with me
In the midnight burn
This may be the bow
Of the ship
But I’m really
Quite stern.
Marcel
-What?
Do you love me?
-Do I not?
Is this the end?
-Mother used to read me bedtime stories.
Former glories.
-Big verdant palms.
Conservatories.
– Shall we get this hot dance done?
You and me and the wind.
-Begin.
Begun.
The tinny tap of workboot on the moving metal floor speckled damp by sea spray and hardened salt in this dank deck quick step so very much like falling through someone else’s dreamscape look at me now I got the rhythm baby I got the moves not like last week when I threw my back out oh how I have put everything into this ship, every emotion and every aspect of my being, oh, the hull is the sum of my parts.
I wind my way
Back through the darkened blocks.
The tall gleaming bridge,
The accommodation decks,
Letting myself back in to its
Industrial brightness.
Fluorescent lights and safety valves,
To the recreation room.
Sailors, deck hands,
Engineers and navigators in their
Jovial down time
Look up as I enter all
Camaraderie and brotherly love.
Heyyyy Robert,
Did you hear about the
Documentary I watched set at a
Corn Flakes factory?
It’s on again next week.
It’s a cereal.
Robert Garnham 