#1640 - gilt memory

1640

5.179

28.vi.24

gilt memory

ekphrastic for Percy Spence’s 1912 ‘Tasman’s Fleet Doubling the Most Southerly Cape of Van Diemen’s Land’

 

 

at Earth’s end

in the roaring

 

a pomp of sails puffed

diadem stern

 

all furling

pennants taut

 

tugging after cloud 

after cliff

 

seadogs at rigging

 

to light their clay pipes

 

in the gull wake spray

in the heaving swell

 

onward and ho

         

no mention of smoke from the shore

or the giants

 

so British these Dutch

 

but it never happened

these weren’t the ships

 

there’s nowhere from which you could see this

 

it’s in the artist’s imagination

not one of these hats blows off