War Poetry
Alan Ross
Destroyers in the Arctic
Camouflaged,
they detach lengths of sea and sky
When they move; offset, speed and direction are a lie.
Everything
is grey anyway; ships, water, snow, faces.
Flanking the convoy, we rarely go through our paces.
But sometimes
on tightening waves at night they wheel
Drawing white moons on strings from dripping keel.
Cold cases
them, like ships in glass; they are formal,
Not real, except in adversity. Then, too, have to seem normal.
At dusk
they intensify, strung out, non-committal:
Waves spill from our wake, crêpe paper magnetized by gun metal.
They breathe
silence, less solid than ghosts, ruminative
As the Arctic breaks up on their sides and they sieve
Moisture
into mess-decks. Heat is cold-lined there,
Where we wait for a torpedo and lack air.
Repititive
of each other, imitating the sea's lift and fall,
On the wings of the convoy they indicate rehearsal.
Merchantmen
move sideways, with the gait of crustaceans,
Round whom like eels escorts take up their stations.
Landfall,
Murmansk; but starboard now a lead-coloured
Island, Jan Mayen. Days identical, hoisted like sails, blurred.
Counters
moved on an Admiralty map, snow like confetti
Covers the real us. We dream we are counterfeits tied to our jetty.
But cannot
dream long; the sea curdles and sprawls,
Liverishly real, and merciless all else away from us falls.