Following on from last week’s theme of the loss of the ‘Titanic’, this week’s offering is what I think is a very fine poem by the Irish poet Derek Mahon (1941-2020), the subject of which is J. Bruce Ismay. Ismay was chairman and managing director of the White Star Line who owned the ‘Titanic’, and he was aboard on her doomed maiden voyage. He survived but afterwards was bitterly criticised for allegedly taking up a place in the lifeboats while there were still women and children aboard. This may not in fact have been the case, as there was much confusion at the time and eyewitness accounts differ, but he was ever after haunted by the loss and what was perceived as his failure to do the honourable thing, and he became a solitary figure, spending his summers at his Connemara cottage on the west coast of Ireland.

I admire this poem for its empathy, with its masterly last line that says it all.

After the Titanic

     They said I got away in a boat
And humbled me at the inquiry. I tell you
     I sank as far that night as any
Hero. As I sat shivering on the dark water
     I turned to ice to hear my costly
Life go thundering down in a pandemonium of
     Prams, pianos, sideboards, winches,
Boilers bursting and shredded ragtime. Now I hide
     In a lonely house behind the sea
Where the tide leaves broken toys and hatboxes
     Silently at my door. The showers of
April, flowers of May mean nothing to me, nor the
     Late light of June, when my gardener
Describes to strangers how the old man stays in bed
     On seaward mornings after nights of
Wind, takes his cocaine and will see no one. Then it is
     I drown again with all those dim
Lost faces I never understood, my poor soul
     Screams out in the starlight, heart
Breaks loose and rolls down like a stone.
     Include me in your lamentations.

Derek Mahon