FR10 - poetry: Graham Rowlands, 'Thomas Hardy Reports on the Raising of "The Titanic"'

GRAHAM ROWLANDS

FR10
NOV 1994

Thomas Hardy Reports on the Raising of 'The Titanic'

Just because you raised it, you think

I've well & truly gone down with the ship

like Keats, stout Cortez & all that. We'll see.

I looked over your salvage & retrieval scheme.

The electronics, of course, were beyond me but

the principles of architecture, hydraulics &

marine engineering are three & the same.

I'll give you credit where credit's due:

V2's, flame throwers, splitting the atom

a cosmology to see & not to see black holes

& spiral galaxies screwing your Milky Way.

Predicting doom was always fun. I thought I'd die

& I was right. I didn't meet my Maker but my end.

I might have taken out poetic licence on my iceberg

but what can you prove with a thin hull that

can't be fobbed off with a thick hide?

Poor design? Find the firm & they'll say

the hull-work was contracted out &

all records went up in the blitz.

If you can pin it on a body corporate

the con man will have worked for commission

proved unreliable, been fired & shortly after

met with an accident in mysterious circumstances.

Of course I was the iceberg. The iceberg was I.

I thought we sank your floating class system

but I was wrong. If I'd managed to be right

every time, I would have been an optimist.

My Schopenhauer might have caught doom & gloom

from what would have responded to penicillin

but be careful what you say about me -

I lived longer than the death of The Titanic.

Graham Rowlands is widely published in national magazines and newspapers. He is a long-time poetry reviewer for Overland.