Island continent
based on a diary account written in 1886 bv Philip Morel Laurens, aged 17, returning from Australia to Jersey, having decided not to emigrate after all
i
The ship is lit with two electric lamps
for loading cargo –
sugar, wool, tin and hide –
thrown aboard in boxes
while two hundred souls sleep,
as fleckered as the gold ore in the hold.
I sleep too,
waking when the decks are washed at seven
and we’re passing Flat Top Island.
Later on we see a steamship
wrecked near Samba,
anchored in a bay.
ii
I’m counting out
the days with islands
each one a future
I’ll not have,
each one an island continent
holding me with promises and almost
imperceptible when night comes
and we dance on deck,
our bodies slow with movement
borrowed from the ship
iii
Last night I woke and felt the ocean
deep beneath me,
fluid running in from the Pole and swelling
blue like blown glass under water;
at dawn the air is creased with it.
I eat pickled eggs for breakfast,
watch flying fish off Bali,
sight another island proving to be clouds.
works in London.
Page(s) 11
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