from Disaster Bay

The barque Jane Spiers,

Little clutter of forgotten timbers

Under the tea-tree, buried in sand,

Keel and ribs and spars

Drowning in the yellow clutch

Of Stephen’s Beach.

Only a twisted shank,

Oddity of time, like a fossil

Curls up out of the sand:

Only the seabirds think

And the hopping land-birds watch

On Stephen’s Beach.

Minutes tick past. Cape Howe slips far behind;

What cause for fear? No one may trust the night

That plucks response from things lodged deep in the mind,

Omens, unreason. While the wake skims level and white,

Churned away from the blade of the steady bows,

And steady’s the course, untroubled the drowsy guide,

You know that this wraith of a ship must safely browse

Home in the roadstead, nudged by a leisurely tide.

And now as a cloud topples from the moon like a leech

The seaway eases and flakes into brilliant caves,

A gully of pearl loops out on the distant beach

And oars of silver lick at the turning waves.

Midnight stuns the air. The piano stops playing,

The shuttle of voices drops, screws muffled in the hull,

The flimsy envelope of water tears with a fraying

Rustle like a whisper, the wind flags in a lull.

Yet there’s no danger at all where moonlight carves

The course to follow, a blazing, narrowing scar,

And the fine thread of the forestay cleanly halves

The Green Cape Light pinpointed like a low star,

A star of assurance. Nadgee thrashes by:

Here the seaboard withdraws to a giant bay

And craning hills sheer off to become the sky,

Each furlong pulls the shore further away.

Bells pattern the air: growing less real,

The Ly-ee Moon, and your thoughts wavering too,

Blinded by that vanishing hour, weary of the steel

Flick-over of the wake, buzz and gride of the screw.

But worlds are back in the wheelhouse, where lamps connive

At a thousand conspiracies of shadow and glare;

Hunched over his wheel the steersman looks alive

Though silence lies on him like dust, lies everywhere.

Minutes leap. On the hour’s towering ascent

A blue, dead sailor jerks out of the sea,

Netted in phosphorescence, head slumped and bent,

Stone mouth leaking peril and prophecy.

His fingers on the bollard glitter, pale and stark

As the limp rays of a starfish, leave traces of frost

When he sinks back and his arm slews out in an arc:

Ghost salutes coming ghost.

Minutes leap. Another hour gathers with the roar

Of surf looming up with the returning line of shore,

And here the City of Sydney went aground

In a gibbering riot of sirens, while fog closed round.

But the Light flashes clearly, whirls on the hump of the Cape

Its spattering disk of warning, a sign known well;

Breakers hurl guttural bewares about the shape

Of table-topped rocks, close at hand and visible—

Full speed. Eyes sharp with terror. Hands that pluck

Vainly at the wheel. Too late the sudden spin.

The cry of a ghost, weakening—Christ, we’ve struck!

As lights snap out and darkness flounders in.