Humble and unknowing they return my gaze
Not living but in limbo
How the eye betrays
In grey and sepia, in far-off days
The men who Man forgot are put away

In archive files and fusty drawers
Like nameless verse and tuneless scores
But flesh and form cannot be bound
Like pages in a book, or found
Without a soul, their doleful sound

Calls out beyond
Their voiceless mouths
Yawning, stretching
Urging us to rouse
To tell a story to the restless crowd

Relive a life and tear the shroud
That wraps them tight in history
And makes of them this mystery
Not glorious enough to solve
Those who did not die in battle, did not fall

Or cling onto the brink of life
And risk their very all
But they were men content
And true, but small

These hands who made Titanic sail into the freeze
Who toiled like bees beneath a whale
In steel and grease
Who sunk without a trace like worthless shale
Anchored, shackled, indistinct and pale

Failed and faded,
Like an image from a bygone day
Not technicolor, never on display
Splintered memories and forgotten tales
Lost amidst the deluge, never setting sail.


www.discovernorthernireland.com/titanic2012

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