The Titanic

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by June Robertson Beisch


So this is how it feels, the deck tilting,
the world slipping away as one
sitting at a desk writes a check.

The Titanic went down titanically
like a goddess glittering,
Pinioned to an iceberg, she sank

almost thankfully while tiny mortals
leapt into the sea
and the band played Nearer My God to Thee.

But what happened to the signals of distress?
Nobody believed it was all really happening.
I still can’t believe that it happened to me.

As a child, I stared horrified at the photograph
and the vision of that scene in the moonlit sea.
We will be one of the survivors, we think,
then something looms up like catastrophe.

All life, it seems, is the morning after
and love is the most beautiful of absolute disasters.

Comments

  1. UnknownApril 15, 2009 at 5:22 AM

    Is the morning after all we have left when the world slips away?

    Well done!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Erin DavisApril 15, 2009 at 1:15 PM

    Wonderful. Love the last two lines!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Eleonora BaldwinApril 15, 2009 at 3:22 PM

    The ending is a killer.
    I've always thought that in a past life, I was a Titanic victim. When I saw the film, I felt I had lived that experience, it was a 3-hour deja vu. Weird. And creepy.
    Love the poem.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Rosaria WilliamsApril 15, 2009 at 4:45 PM

    .."love is the most beautiful of absolute disasters". This is a telling sign, an impeding condemnation of life as we know it. Very forceful statement indeed, a Titanic event!

    ReplyDelete
  5. RudeeApril 15, 2009 at 9:37 PM

    This is amazingly profound. I had to reread the entire thing after I read the last two lines. I had an entirely different interpretation the second time around.

    ReplyDelete

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Hey, thanks for your thoughts and your time:>)

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