From Tynemouth Priory

 
 
 
 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