7
The Dusk Casts Shadows
The dusk casts shadows on the drowning sun,
Titanic's lights ablaze. She cleaves the sea,
a mirror to the stars, her maiden run
serene success by some divine decree.
The falling swell has passed, the past astern.
The last two days will spell “The Promised Land”
each Steerage soul must face with some concern,
with little else but landing grant in hand.
In First, astern the barren promenade,
the after-mast casts light in frosty arcs
on Ida Straus *, her furs, her pale pomade,
and Isidor, in arm, as she remarks,
before retiring to the plush saloon,
“The sea’s like glass this Sunday night. No moon.”
***
***
8
“Iceberg dead ahead!”
[11:40 p.m. April 14 1912]
“The sea is calm tonight,
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits; …”
Matthew Arnold, Dover Beach (1867)
The sea’s like glass this Sunday night. No moon
casts light upon the ice-pocked sea, where stars
are cast in bituminous black, in tune
with Ages Past. Titanic flat-out scars
the glassy sea her raking bowsprit cleaves:
her splashing wake’s so cold her passengers
must flee the promenades the starlight leaves
in livid darkness.... where nothing stirs,
and nothing stays the artificial breeze
that snakes along the hull, and takes its pulse
on brittle rivets, frozen; so they seize
upon the berg Titanic can’t repulse.
Fleet * alerts the bridge, “Iceberg dead ahead!”
“Astern!” Propellers lash. The iceberg 's fled.
***
***
RMS Titanic Centennial Sonnets 7 & 8. are excerpts from Richard Vallance's
Garland of Sonnets due for later publication, in - The Phoenix Rising from
the Ashes: Anthology of sonnets of the early third millennium= Le Phénix
renaissant de ses cendres : Anthologie de sonnets au début du troisième
millénaire -now in the galley production stage at Friesen Press, scheduled
for release June 2013. ISBN: Hardcover: 978-1-4602-1700-9 Paperback:
978-1-4602-1701-6 eBook: 978-1-4602-1702-3.
We urge readers of these sonnets in Poetry Life & Times pre-published from
The Phoenix Rising from the Ashes = Le Phénix renaissant de ses cendes.
Victoria, B.C., Canada, Friesen Press, © June 2013 300 sonnets in English,
French, German, Chinese & Farsi, http://vallance22.hpage.com/, to visit the
site. Readers may also contact Richard Vallance, Editor-in-Chief, at:
vallance22@gmx.com for further information.