Poem
Peter Porter
The Castaway is Washed Ashore
The Castaway is Washed Ashore
The Castaway is Washed Ashore
She was the ship I sailed in, orWe twinned as just one ship,
A Mother and a Son, assured
Of one another’s grip.
We guessed it wouldn’t be for life,
A boy becalmed, a seasoned wife.
Whatever, there would come the storm,
The light propitious fade;
Suburban living was the norm,
A slovenly parade.
Which one would fall, which doomed to drown,
If climbing up were settling down?
The storm would blow us separately –
For her, poor doctoring,
Stifled in her own blood’s sea,
I, at her skirts to cling.
Then Education’s sad voice hit
My ears and I joined mine to it.
Out on the selfish ocean tossed,
The storm now just a squall,
Apocalypse the only Cross
At all empirical:
My placement was below the salt,
A setting? Or a Primal Fault?
A second ship – this was another
Woman marked to die.
No strong resemblance to my Mother,
But, like her, serving my
Absurd disintegration, taking
Her need beyond a quick forsaking.
Mixed metaphors sail on apace,
The ship goes down and then
A second time the splintered face,
A Castaway again –
A pair of ragged claws might row
Me safely from the undertow.
Quotations like a flag unfurled
In cruel convenience
Showed my position in the world,
The past my present tense.
As mushrooms, rose the childish faces,
A succulence of desert places.
As if in time’s conjunctions, I
Flew past the sugared peaks
Of Greenland – portholes bled the sky
For Frequent Flyer geeks –
Life had to make its proffered run
Between extinction and the sun.
Such was the beach I scrambled up,
Like Crusoe seeming saved,
The storm still simmered in its cup
Which through my dreams had raved.
The mind, that navigating hand,
Now sought to drown me on the land.
© 2007, Peter Porter
From: Poetry Review, 97:2
Publisher: Poetry Review, London
From: Poetry Review, 97:2
Publisher: Poetry Review, London
Peter Porter
(Australia, 1929)
Peter Porter was born in Brisbane, Australia in 1929. He moved to London in 1951, and became associated with ‘The Group’ of poets including Martin Bell and Phillip Hobsbaum. Porter worked in bookselling and advertising before becoming a freelance writer and broadcaster in 1968, working for The Observer as poetry critic. In 1999, OUP published two volumes of Porter’s poetry covering the years 19...
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The Castaway is Washed Ashore
She was the ship I sailed in, orWe twinned as just one ship,
A Mother and a Son, assured
Of one another’s grip.
We guessed it wouldn’t be for life,
A boy becalmed, a seasoned wife.
Whatever, there would come the storm,
The light propitious fade;
Suburban living was the norm,
A slovenly parade.
Which one would fall, which doomed to drown,
If climbing up were settling down?
The storm would blow us separately –
For her, poor doctoring,
Stifled in her own blood’s sea,
I, at her skirts to cling.
Then Education’s sad voice hit
My ears and I joined mine to it.
Out on the selfish ocean tossed,
The storm now just a squall,
Apocalypse the only Cross
At all empirical:
My placement was below the salt,
A setting? Or a Primal Fault?
A second ship – this was another
Woman marked to die.
No strong resemblance to my Mother,
But, like her, serving my
Absurd disintegration, taking
Her need beyond a quick forsaking.
Mixed metaphors sail on apace,
The ship goes down and then
A second time the splintered face,
A Castaway again –
A pair of ragged claws might row
Me safely from the undertow.
Quotations like a flag unfurled
In cruel convenience
Showed my position in the world,
The past my present tense.
As mushrooms, rose the childish faces,
A succulence of desert places.
As if in time’s conjunctions, I
Flew past the sugared peaks
Of Greenland – portholes bled the sky
For Frequent Flyer geeks –
Life had to make its proffered run
Between extinction and the sun.
Such was the beach I scrambled up,
Like Crusoe seeming saved,
The storm still simmered in its cup
Which through my dreams had raved.
The mind, that navigating hand,
Now sought to drown me on the land.
From: Poetry Review, 97:2
The Castaway is Washed Ashore
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