Poetry - Aero, Nautical, Navigational (and Nice)
A few of my favourites - please add yours..
“ I think poetry is written mostly for pleasure, by which I mean
The pleasure of pain, horror, anguish, and awe as
Well as the pleasure of beauty, music,
And the act of living.”
- Kenneth Slessor
CAPTAIN COOK
COOK was a captain of the Admiralty
When sea-captains had the evil eye,
Or should have, what with beating krakens off
And casting nativities of ships;
Cook was a captain of the powder days
When captains, you might have said, if you had been
Fixed by their glittering stare, half down the side,
Or gaping at them up companionways,
Were more like warlocks than a humble man-
And men were humble then who gazed at them,
Poor horn-eyed sailors, bullied by devil’s fists
Or wind or water, or the want of both,
Childlike and trusting, filled with eager trust-
Cook was a captain of the sailing days
When sea-captains were kings like this,
Not cold executives of company-rules
Cracking boilers for a dividend
Or bidding their engineers go wink
At bells and telegraphs, so plates would hold
Another pound. Those captains drove their ships
By their own blood, no laws of schoolbook steam,
Till yards were sprung, and masts went overboard-
Daemons in periwigs, doling magic out,
Who reads fair alphabets in stars
Where humbler men found but a mess of sparks,
Who steered their crews by mysteries
And strange, half-dreadful sortilege with books,
Used medicines that only gods could know
The sense of, but sailors drank
In simple faith. That was the captain
Cook was when he came to the Coral Sea
And chose a passage into the dark.
How many mariners had made that choice
Paused on the brink of mystery! “Choose now!”
The winds roared, blowing home, blowing home,
Over the Coral Sea. “Choose now!” the trades
Cried once to Tasman, throwing him for choice
Their teeth or shoulders, and the Dutchman chose
The wind’s way, turning north. “Choose, Bougainville!”
The wind cried once, and Bougainville had heard
The voice of God, calling him prudently
Out of the dead lee shore, and chose the north,
The wind’s way. So, too, Cook made choice,
Over the brink, into the devil’s mouth,
With four months’ food, and sailors wild with dreams
Of English beer, the smoking barns of home.
So Cook made choice, so Cook sailed westabout,
So men write poems in Australia.
Kenneth Slessor
THE TWO CLOCKS
TWO chronometers the captain had,
One by Arnold that ran like mad,
One by Kendal in a walnut case,
Poor devoted creature with a hangdog face.
Arnold always hurried with a crazed click-click
Dancing over Greenwich like a lunatic,
Kendal panted faithfully his watch-dog beat,
Climbing out of Yesterday with sticky little feet.
Arnold choked with appetite to wolf up time,
Madly round the numerals his hands would climb,
His cogs rushed over and his wheels ran miles,
Dragging Captain Cook to the Sandwich Isles.
But Kendal dawdled in the tombstoned past,
With a sentimental prejudice to going fast,
And he thought very often of a haberdasher’s door
And a yellow-haired boy who would knock no more.
All through the night-time, clock talked to clock,
In the captain’s cabin, tock-tock-tock,
One ticked fast and one ticked slow,
And time went over them a hundred years ago.
Kenneth Slessor