Rosie
It
all began with an angry man, fifteen years ago,
With a drunken brawl and
a bloodstained wall,
With a stolen life, a
repentant thief,
With the silent screams
of a mother’s grief;
And twelve quiet men in a
row.
I will not dwell on the
cloying smell,
On the crowding walls of
my blackened cell,
On each footfall in the
echoing hall
Or the creeping hours
that gnawed away
At the gloom of night and
the dusk of day;
On the depths to which I
fell.
Not twelve months wed, on
my lonely bed,
Too long to reflect and
my only view
The bewildered looks of
reproaching ghosts,
Of my earnest Sue and our
daughter new -
Of the Rosie that I have
lost.
Sue wrote to me of her
loss of me,
Of her shame for me and
her lonely lot,
Of her flight with Rose
to a distant town -
To Cannismouth - to lick
her wounds;
But she left me here to
rot.
I wrote when I could in
lines of blood
On paper I had exchanged
for food,
When I’d none, instead,
I wrote in my head;
I hoped that she
understood.
She never replied - I
know now why;
In time Sue faded and
love did too
But still in my dreams my
Rosie grew.
I watched her play and I
felt her cry,
I heard her laughing -
and then time flew.
We would walk by the
shore and I’d tell Rose tales
Of lands explored, of the
seas I’d sailed,
Of monsters glimpsed and
of fearsome gales;
She’d tell of her
school, and peer in the pools
And play with her net and
pail.
Then I lay at last on
God’s green grass
Entranced by the breeze
and the whispering trees;
I drank in the sky and
the seagulls’ cries,
I soaked in the sun by
the grim old gate
‘Til hunger pricked my
enchanted state;
I’d a march and the
hour was late.
I slept in the barn of a
great old farm
Whose slumberous squire
had furnished a feast
Of a carrot or two and a
handful of corn.
I stirred with the first
grey glimmer of dawn;
I tried not to wake the
geese.
Well known was the way
that I trod that day,
Though I knew not a leaf
nor a blade of grass,
Though the stream where
I’d played had long run away
To the one great sea and
the scatter of masts,
To the sea I could smell
at last.
As I came to the town
that was once my own
I felt a hush and a door
draw to,
As cold heads turned and
the silence grew -
As the tally rose of
the faces I knew
I began to feel alone.
I passed on straight to
the dockyard gate
And was met by a clerk
with an awkward grin;
I could hear the
shipwright’s voice within,
I waited where I was told
to wait;
I wasn’t invited in.
I tramped until every pit
and mill
Had turned me away with
the same lament:
‘No work today’ with
hollow dismay
Or a sorry smile that
served me ill
And a whispering as I
went.
So I set off south for
Cannismouth
And shook off the chill
of my brother’s home
With my hunger stilled
but a heavy breast,
Uncleansed by his bath,
unsoothed by his rest;
I was thankful to be
alone.
Over banks and stiles
near a hundred miles
On the paths and the
lanes that my love had trod,
Cloaked by the night from
distrustful sight
I crept alone to a fate
unknown
The little town lay, with
her heart of clay
Asleep in the arms of her
wooded shores,
A dozing fort on her
raised right fist,
A cross on the bones of a
drowned left wrist,
I made my way with the
dawning day
Through slumbering
streets whose only sign
Of rekindling life was
the curling smoke -
A secret shared with the
still grey air
Of smouldering peat, of
glowing oak
Or of frothing, spitting
pine.
I stopped, in the lee of
an old stone quay
To the waking town and
the lapping sea,
To the clop of hooves and
the clatter of wheels,
To the shouts of men and
the ring of steel,
To the creak of rope, to
the clang of a gate,
To the church clock
tolling eight.
From a jumbled mess of
rope and nets
A branch arose - and a
second one -
Then a crown of sticks
and a massive paw,
Two bright eyes and a
beard of straw
Took shape like the
rising sun.
The woodman tipped off
his burden and took
A solemn stock of the
stranger he saw,
Then he grinned with his
eyes and scratched his head;
I helped him to bring his
load ashore.
So I threw in my lot with
Ted.
In flood and in fog, on
my raft of logs
I tested the wiles of the
wind and tide,
I learned of the shoals,
of the river’s moods,
I drank and I cried with
Ted and his bride;
I shared their house in
the woods.
When I talked of Sue,
they could think of two:
“There's Sam's girl –
then – ‘tis the ferryman’s wife –
Bides by ‘emselves –
and a daughter there be,
By her dead husband –
who were lost at sea -
They’s a queer - least
- a quiet life”.
Through the twilight
wood, in sombre mood
I paced the mile to the
ferry stage
Where it lay in a fold of
the harbour’s neck.
I turned up the lamp on
the topmost step
And watched for what
seemed an age.
At last on the shore
below the fort
From the blackened beach,
a blacker shape
Emerged to disturb the
sleeping sea;
Wrapped in himself and a
heavy cape
The ferryman came for me.
He’d nothing to say in
a surly way
And, catching his mood, I
said nothing too.
Just the chink of coins
as he took my fare
And the rhythmic splash
of his oars cut through
The warily still night
air.
He helped me alight and I
bid him goodnight,
I stopped in the deepest
shadows where
I could watch him climb
to his silent lair,
Could spy on the rites of
his simple life -
Where I heard him cursing
my wife.
A shadow stretched and
threw off its vest
Then a gallows of light
grew around the door;
It widened to frame a
remnant of Sue
Pathetically bent,
impassioned no more,
Just a ghost of the girl
I knew.
I ran to her side and
smothered her cry;
She was startled - but
barely a trace of surprise
Crossed her face - dark
and empty - in the shadowy light.
She’d a bruise on her
cheek and despair in her eyes –
Eyes that wished me back
into the night.
I promised to go - but
first I should know
If Rosie were well, if
she thought of me.
“She looks for you,
aye, when she walks by the sea;
If you care for her
still, then you’ll lie there in peace -
She’s away – ‘til
tomorrow at least”.
I recoiled to the wood to
lie and brood
On the course of love and
that love should take;
I awoke to my grief and a
freshening breeze,
To the troubled murmur of
salt-scarred trees,
I stood aside as the day
passed by
With never a sign of my
severed child
To drag me in and sweep
me away.
Squalls streaked the
waves with tendrils of spray;
The indignant sea grew
wild.
Only shades of grey
remained of the day
When your boat came
ashore in a foaming rush.
He
stood so tall and you so meek,
I saw you shrink as he
touched your cheek,
From so little I learned
so much.
As you trudged up, alone,
to your sorry home
I resolved to confront
the gathering storm.
The ferryman seemed, as
he turned to my step,
To catch in my face a
familiar form
But he couldn’t
decipher it - yet.
With a reckless laugh he
hauled his craft
Back down the beach and
into the surf.
His oaths, swept away by
the shrieking wind
Were harmlessly
dispersed.
Clear of Neptune’s
Teeth the seas grew steep
Reined back by the bar
and the moon’s long reach.
I looked for alarm in the
ferryman’s face
But a brooding stare was
all I found there
And I held his troubled
gaze.
In a moment he knew and
the certainty grew -
Too late did he feel our
stern swing around -
See the galloping breaker
that left us for drowned;
The first thing I grabbed
was the ferryman’s hair,
Alone, in the blackness,
out there.
Two souls laid bare with
no time for tears,
Remote from the storm,
from the world and its cares;
The moment passed but
never the deed;
From every kelp-crowned
rock he stares,
From each floating tuft
of weed.
I held him safe through
the battering waves
‘Til we both lay limp
on the Coombe Hawn sand.
The cowman who found us
told of the way
I had grasped to my
breast the dead man’s hand;
So the saint was born of
the knave.
The rest you know: I am
Ferryman now
And you are my child
though you wound me so.
Though I’ve slain your
father and taken his wife,
Though I’ll burn
forever, before I go,
Might I tell, one day, of
a better life -
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