Poetry of Issue #7        Page 6

Save Time By Night Services
(Kenneth Shoesmith, c. 1930s)

Shoesmith was content year after year to serve Her Majesty's dominions
in steamers of the Royal Mail via silken ropes of Empire—

from Kingston & Holyhead through tropic bilge to lush port cities of the South.
Came queened & franked the self-important post.
Looking-glass portals & stout bulwarks:

the Sun never set as yet — there's a Union Jack
over spools of cotton, canisters of Ceylon tea (the uplands very suited
to the uses of cultivation)

Shoesmith limning trenches in an opaque ocean, winches hauling salt shadows,
great engines throbbing, hull smeared with feathers & blood

while as ship's officer he sips tea in a caul of fog unfazed,
having engineered said fog to test the masthead lights.

Round the fore & aft he circumambulates
(the crew would know his painted ships if Davy Jonesed
or steered by Shoesmith to permanent dry dock.)

But his Night Services ("arrive in Paris in time for a day's business")
the wings of some frantic thing furling from the smokestack

a second ship from Southampton racing along flirtatiously
blue whale saving time on Britannia's waves entre deux guerres —

what can we know of Shoesmith & his youthful romance with the deep
wild birds of the littoral brash & gold ships transecting the swell,
the plural uses of art perhaps to make the sea clang warning bells.

  Carol Alexander