‘OLD AGE is a SHIPWRECK’
Charles de Gaulle
Some boats sink themselves slightly in order to
sleep—they awake with grog hangovers, leaning against
rocks, tillers askew as sea is softened by golden dawn.
The boom swung, tipsily; when the drowsy sail
was hoisted it groaned: *auxiliary! Poking its prow
through the greybeards, the cutter then gathered pace,
parting plungers and apologetic waves as it cast off,
taking leave of the harbour in a cloud of spindrift.
The sail was slumped dizzily on the once-strong
shoulders of the mast—it sighs for its sorry spar and
state, remembering arduous journeys on seas of glass,
but no one dares say how conifer bark rains down in
flakes when it sleeps. The signal lamp, once brilliantly
bright, fraternising with the stars each night, is now
outshone by the eyes of abyssal creatures; see it
wrapped up in a pea jacket, perched on the yardarm.
On the weatherdeck mop and bucket are talking
scuttlebutt and canonising shipwreckless legends of the
past—when the laughter stops, and the deployment of
nets, perhaps they stop to think why, and sloppy work
and holystone and, sky…
Kittee-wa-aaake, kitte-wa-aaake—looking for a
school of fish whilst, in their numbers, orbiting the
vessel in an ellipsis; suspicious eyes on our walty
cutter and its measly midday catch. Tragic wrecks of
birds and ships alike, who is to say—to draw the lines
and make divisions of sea and bird and wood? Birds in
their collective strength move like waves, how they
could carry ships! This one is anchored fast, riding it
out as if a storm. But this collective strength, these
birds with villainous intent nip at the weather-worn
fishing nets and lines and a few ***** are lifted. The
barnacles sleep, nightmare visions of keelhauling—who
knew they had such wounds to heal?—forgotten
underneath in the darkness, they are plucked from their
shells by beaks regardless.
Back at the harbour the boat and its weary flanks and
planks and parts and hollow and hull are comfortably
submerged and sleep. The sun is sinking too it seems,
melting on the tongue of the sea. The broken-backed
vessel, dead doors shut, sail folded, mast
unencumbered. The signal lamp, intimidated and
outnumbered by the many who are brighter in the sky
with light years in their eyes, it decides to sleep out
and keep check for the night for the crows in their
murders covet nesting spots on board.
Splinters and vibrating minutes and the bitter end,
perturbed by the day of eddies and unseen internal
waves, nipped by the endless Kittiwake, they are
consulting compasses for the correct hour—
but no response, just the obviousness of the moon,
even from fathoms down and not a whisper.
As in every dark night here there is no silence for the
utterance of water and rustling of stars. You can hear
Sargasso **** dreaming, after hundreds of years afloat
without making root, dreaming of something better or
at last nothing at all. And in every creak of wood there
is a year of bad weather. And within the strength of
every bird is an empty stomach and a restlessness of
wings. In every decomposing fishing net there’s an
echo of vengeance, heard beneath the ringing of a bell
on the harbour. And in every compass there is a needle
tirelessly at work, endlessly referring to the stars—
The red-tipped needle in its binnacle tower
—confused it still spins and swirls
and in every skiff, freshly built or sea-worn and sore,
there is always a desire it will never speak of:
to
dive
for
pearls
on the ocean floor.
Part Eight of The Man Who Longed to be an Oyster (see collections)
