Alang--The Graveyard of Ships.(Poem)

 
ALANG--THE GRAVEYARD OF SHIPS. 
(A port in India where ships are run aground and broken up 
for scrap metal by native labourers.) 
 
   Slowly the great ships slide 
   down the slip of ice waves, 
   Cut their path where kelp gardens wave their fronds--to wipe away 
   The stir of waters--the ships have passed. 
   Now, like ailing whales they rush the beach 
   Cutting deep and fast--the sand holds. 
   Strange fish drove down and begin to nibble. 
 
   This last, 
   the iron warrior, cuts the water 
   The great dark engines burning in its bowels 
   The pain of soldiers carried into fire, 
   Dark wounds that veterans carry to the grave. 
   The waves lap at its silence, 
   Seagulls pick at the reflections of its empty eyes. 
 
   There begins the slow demobbing, 
   The giant gaunt as P.O.W.s 
   abandoned in the wake of war, 
   Minion little fish pick round the hull, 
   Dark forms above move about their myriad tasks. 
   Nothing is spared the fire of desperate men 
   Whose children cry far off 
   the ...