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The Spike [: or, Victoria University College Review 1957]

Dark Harbour

Dark Harbour

Shadow and water, water, water and shadow.
A night with fine rain falling; through the dark
Bright flowers of voices blossom, the light sound
Of water lapping the looming hull and rain
Tapping the black tarpaulins, break the silence
As a ship prepares for tomorrow's outward voyage.

They have stowed away in the shadowy hold's deep sound
A thousand dreams, a dream for every shadow.
All night long, till the morning watch, the rain
Pours out of a black sky defining the silence,
And that grey ship, alerted for her voyage,
Waits for the banishment of the Nantucket dark.

Then before morning storm booms out of the dark
And the hands of thunder tear the enshrining silence.
The Captain hovers, an Ahab in the shadow,
Taut with the fear that there will be no voyage;
A voice in his brain, echoing every sound,
Tells of the gathered fury of the rain.

All night long, till the morning watch, the rain
Speaks to him of the folly of his voyage,
His dreams desert him one by one in the dark;
But at eight bells of the morning watch the sound
Of rain and thunder and wind dies away, and the shadow
Creeps out of the harbour leaving only silence.

The sun comes up and, in the first light's silence.
Drives out the last retreating drops of rain.
With blare of klaxons the grey ship starts her voyage,
Setting her course from the hill-girt harbour's shadow,
Pushes her bow-wave away from the storm-beaten dark
Of the wrecked jetty into the green deep sound.

page 75

Through a white foam of seas she makes her voyage
Slowly, through waters far too deep to sound,
Pursuing a dream amid the whitening silence.
Yet on her bridge there lingers still the dark
Thought of the storm, words of the threatening rain.
She voyages navigated by a shadow.

And on the jetty haunted by his shadow
A figure crouches, cursing the long rain;
Still eager, like Odysseus, to embark.

*