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1. Inside the Whale

The hammocks creak as they swing,
soothing, in the night, to the
throbbing foetal heart of the big ship.

Being cadets, we’re on the least desirable deck,
six storeys down, an intestine of netted bodies,
dancing cheek to cheek, snoring and farting.

There’s adventure in the belly of the whale,
nosing out of a benighted foggy Mersey, with an
invisible convoy and God knows what out there.

2. Sea-gale Mathematics

In the Bay of Biscay, it’s living in a lift:
I toil up three steps, trip up another twenty.

At breakfast the table’s set for twelve,
but only two have appetites. That’s six eggs each.

3. The Mediterranean

Past Gibraltar our convoy’s visible
with its destroyers and corvettes — nervous
nannies, nursing and fussing their flock.

Sea air charms the lungs. It’s life in a film:
witnesses of ourselves on location, in a war at sea.
The occasional tentative depth charge tries the deeps.

With nothing to do but play pontoon and think,
I tell my fellow-cadets the brass prefer
latently homosexual officers: they love their men.

Remember Sassoon and Owen, I say — and
Graves’s battlefield strewn with bloodstained boys.
Someone's heard. Do I think it's true?

Oh yes. I look at him solemnly, and he
looks at me with interested speculation.

4. Port Said

Men in kaftans lift their skirts, raise a fisted
forearm from their crotch and do a dance.

Boats are bumping alongside, trying to sell. There
it is: the blueness, sand and heat we've merely imagined.

Not allowed ashore, we can only picture
the woman fucked by a donkey as we line the rail.

5. Wild Life

In the Red Sea we're invaded by locusts,
corn-on-the-cob contraptions
with grasshopper heads and live antennae.
They whirr about inside like model planes.

I sleep illegally on deck: sparks of light
are flashing from the prow, and dawn flying fish
skim the blueness like a squadron of swallows.
Escaping predatory jaws? — or is it joy?

Life aboard is a clockless discourse.
I lean or sit and watch an unfolding text.
The happenings are made by sailors and politicians.
The purpose of my life — will I know it in the next?

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