III

Relieved from the weight of old words
Sleeping ships knock
Shuffling scrape,
Tick into tock
Of handclap heel’s
Click and crack.

Duty echoes resonate,
With the pith and tenor of bones,
Above us, haunting
Tinnitus screams
Wield the punctured drone
Of distant feral drum.

Shook free from years
Of human rust,
Keen-eyed passage
Marks dimming glances,
Mouthing memory,
As listed names burr
Alongside foreign places.

In seething fade
The absent cast
Heave dissolving anchors,
Shadows free from scale.

As hidden furies toll
For sovereign night,
Its gifted whisper,
A prelude to false fate.

Their shapes succumbed
To darkness, but never
Fully withdrawn
From the warmth
Of retreating sun.

Our departure makes
No demand of us
But truth in place of fear,
All we offer is our refusal;

the restless rising,
Where new marks are made,
To immure against forgetting,
Unspoken promises regained.

Stepping forwards, from the
Alighting cloisters of St. Bride’s,
We outlive the finitude of breath,
Still, our brittleness shone bright.