Little fishingboats, like minnows
around the Nissan ship’s leviathan,
skim the sea’s silver top coat as they
skate into the hungry rivermouth.
The King of Deira’s dusty bones,
fifteen hundred years asleep
beneath Pen Bal Crag,
where a century is a blink,
didn’t stir at the mammoth crane
bouldering along the pier wall,
laying down new blocks as it went,
rumbling thunder to wake the dead
and asleep with Macbeth’s Malcolm,
neither of them even notice
the latterday hum of tiny sculls,
like no longboat they ever saw.
Spattering the canvas
of this ancient seashore,
these minutes not even seconds
and will be relived nevermore.
Harry Gallagher
