So many of those that I once knew
drowned in the Atlantic or the Pacific,
that unignorable and unknown blue.
Fishermen and part-time footballers,
inadequate scholars, starers at dusty maps,
now forever locked in the sea’s purse
with a miserly snap, while the guns tolled
over these restless acres, not to be ploughed,
at sunset fading into a foreign gold.
These guns which defended an empire
which wasn’t, isn’t, yours, who have drowned
ignorantly in sharp salt and fire,
who were once big figures in the twilight
where the river gently ran and chimneys bloomed
with a smoke sometimes grey and sometimes violet,
bone of my bone, my villagers. You have met
with the foreign-spoken stranger who has pulled
you inwards to his boat, his teeming net,
a random catch, I think not predestined,
gaping, slack-jawed, stubbly. Yet I sing
you breathless in the meshes long enchained.