James Daly
AFTER SHIPWRECK
Then, then when
Beyond jagged cluster of rocks
The beach
surpassing terror's forecast
Plunged desolate toward our raft
We remembered
hands, hands
0 the seen suck and those
Eyes emerging, those sodden
Braids
Explosion had torn those
Mouths, even the glazed eyes were bloody
We the alive remembered
Fragments of bodies
A dead rat clutching a dead woman's hair
Wide away gone ripplings
Stricken with smoulder
The of-shrieks the of-steel the
Of-smoke
phantasmal memory while
Beach plunged toward us, bleakest
(Except for a distant bird that winged up,
It seemed a flamingo)
Bleakest paradise that ever
Heart cried out to
When its cry was Land
17
