Old, abandoned wooden hulks,
They lie, keeled over, on coarse grass,
Left to sleep on the estuary flats.

These brute barges, timbers strong
As the men who worked them, masterless,
Rise on no tide, rest heavy and decay.

From one, still upright, a mooring rope
Hangs in an arc, like the downward curve
Of its great, oaken, rusty-hinged rudder;

Tied to the mud where older keel spines die.