FILM MUSIC FOR THE TITANIC

At last the cameras roll beneath the surface.
In those old films they turn away
Just at the point
Where the flagstaff disappears
The last strains of ‘Autumn’ fade
and the band pack up their instruments and die.
It’s as if they couldn’t bear to look
Beneath the floating deckchairs and the violin cases
The disconnected dramas in the lifeboats
Lesser themes swirling
Above the dark deep tones of her dying fall.

Leave them for the rescue ships and the newspapers
For the closing scenes and the credits
And follow her down
Fathom after black fathom.
Does she plummet like a huge stone
Or echo the orchestra’s last waltz
Pirouetting
Like a falling leaf
In monstrous slow motion?

Here where the elements
And the laws of nature take over
Far from the comfort of ‘Nearer my God to Thee’
Her black bulk settles like a coffin
Committed to the deep
Filling at every pore with water
Black as earth
Trailing like a scream a long drawn out wake
Hurtling to that awful
Final, crashing chord.

Her relics littering the seabed
Like forgotten images on the cutting room floor.

[For Robert Ballard,  who first filmed the wreck in 1985.]

Colin Jack

NEW LIFE

Changing this life of gloom,
A new beginning in a land that is free.
Aboard this striking vessel
Of titanic grace and majesty

Sailing to fulfil our dreams
Forward towards prosperity
Holding loved ones in our hearts
To hope and liberty

Beneath the depth
With breath no more,
Hope sinks and dreams end
For the titanic loss and gloom.

Kate Rathbone

POEM

Unsinkable, unthinkable,
How unbelievable the water seems
So hold your breath and don't forget 
The fathoms of your dreams 

Barry Johnson 

TITANIC TIMES

What was the latest craze
In those heady, Edwardian days?
No iPhones, no cars, no TV
Aeroplanes in their infancy
The in-thing would have been steam!
The Mersey scene
So different then - the River full of ships
And tugs, so many different lines
Cunard, White Star, PSNC et al,
The docks busy with Stevedores
And warehouses full of merchandise.
First Canals, then Railways brought communication
Pathways across our great Nation.
For steam we needed coal – miners, mines, machinery
Great wealth for some, for others grinding poverty.
The New World beckoned promising gold
A way out of dilemma for the bold.
Marconi Wireless Operators on every ship
Cargo in every hold
Fierce competition
From our European Competitors.
Surely such a wonderful ship would bring the coveted Blue Ribbon
Carrying mail speedily to America and back to our shore
And Britannia would rule the waves once more.
A floating palace, the like of which was never seen
And British planned, owned and built
Ismay Lancashire born and bred.
RMS Titanic – Queen of the White Star Line
“In the language of the poet ‘a knock-out’” far ahead of her time…
At a time when there were so many ships and shipping lines.
Is it any wonder that a hundred years on
The Nation still mourns the loss of the Titanic
And so many worthy souls.

Lucy London

SCREAMING

Screaming, shouting
Doing it more
Can’t stop, won't stop
Don’t want to do it any more

Crying, hiding
Wanting to be alone
Why do I want to be alone?
Don’t want to do it any more

Striking, hitting hit
Wanting to do it more
Want to stop, can’t stop
Don’t want to do it any more

Stop the pain
Want it to stop
Can’t stop
Don’t want to do it any more

Dawn Carter

ANTHEM FOR DOOMED YOUTH

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,—
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

THE SEND-OFF

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.

Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Dull porters watched them, and a casual tramp
Stood staring hard,
Sorry to miss them from the upland camp.
Then, unmoved, signals nodded, and a lamp
Winked to the guard.

So secretly, like wrongs hushed-up, they went.
They were not ours:
We never heard to which front these were sent.

Nor there if they yet mock what women meant
Who gave them flowers.

Shall they return to beatings of great bells
In wild trainloads?
A few, a few, too few for drums and yells,
May creep back, silent, to still village wells
Up half-known roads.

ARMS AND THE BOY

Let the boy try along this bayonet-blade
How cold steel is, and keen with hunger of blood;
Blue with all malice, like a madman's flash;
And thinly drawn with famishing for flesh.

Lend him to stroke these blind, blunt bullet-heads
Which long to muzzle in the hearts of lads.
Or give him cartridges of fine zinc teeth,
Sharp with the sharpness of grief and death.

For his teeth seem for laughing round an apple.
There lurk no claws behind his fingers supple;
And God will grow no talons at his heels,
Nor antlers through the thickness of his curls.

THE LAST LAUGH

Oh! Jesus Christ! I'm hit,' he said; and died.
Whether he vainly cursed or prayed indeed,
The Bullets chirped-In vain, vain, vain!
Machine-guns chuckled,-Tut-tut! Tut-tut!
And the Big Gun guffawed.

Another sighed,-'O Mother, -Mother, - Dad!'
Then smiled at nothing, childlike, being dead.
And the lofty Shrapnel-cloud
Leisurely gestured,-Fool!
And the splinters spat, and tittered.

'My Love!' one moaned. Love-languid seemed his mood,
Till slowly lowered, his whole faced kissed the mud.
And the Bayonets' long teeth grinned;
Rabbles of Shells hooted and groaned;
And the Gas hissed.

CONSCIOUS

His fingers wake, and flutter up the bed.
His eyes come open with a pull of will,
Helped by the yellow may-flowers by his head.
A blind-cord drawls across the window-sill...
How smooth the floor of the ward is! What a rug!
And who's that talking, somewhere out of sight?
Why are they laughing? What's inside that jug?
"Nurse! Doctor!" "Yes; all right, all right."

But sudden dusk bewilders all the air—
There seems no time to want a drink of water.
Nurse looks so far away. And everywhere
Music and roses burnt through crimson slaughter.
Cold; cold; he's cold; and yet so hot:
And there's no light to see the voices by—
No time to dream, and ask—he knows not what.

FUTILITY

Move him into the sun -
Gently its touch awoke him once,
At home, whispering of fields unsown.
Always it woke him, even in France,
Until this morning and this snow.
If anything might rouse him now
The kind old sun will know.

Think how it wakes the seeds, -
Woke, once, the clays of a cold star.
Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides,
Full-nerved, - still warm, - too hard to stir?
Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break earth's sleep at all?