Impact
Page 2
heavy with the feeling
he’d become a man.
* * *
THE WISHING WELL
As her lifeboat lowered,
one woman recalled
a childhood game
where she squeezed
both feet
into the bucket
from a wishing well,
and held on tight
as her brothers
lowered her
down
to the bottom.
She never opened
her eyes,
could only tell
she made it
by the splash
and the lapping sounds
that reminded her
of hunting dogs drinking
from a birdbath
or pond.
As her brothers
pulled her
back up
she’d think
of new excuses
to tell her mother,
yet another puddle,
a spilled glass
of water,
a leaky vase
full of flowers.
* * *
EDITH EVANS
A fortune teller once told Edith Evans,
beware of the water. For years she walked
with her head down, convinced that if she didn’t
she’d someday step into a puddle,
ruin a new pair of shoes.
When the last lifeboat left without her,
the deck all of a sudden filled with men,
she reached down to her ankles, undid the laces,
threw her shoes into the darkness—and waited,
waited for the splash.
* * *
THE PIANO PLAYER
Unlike his musician compatriots
whose instruments could be carried on deck
the ship’s piano player could only watch
as his band mates played on.
At first he just swayed to the music
then tapped his feet and hummed
but he couldn’t withstand
the ache to play along
even without a sound
his hands slipping from gloves,
his cold fingers
tickling the air, ghost-style.
* * *
EPIPHANY
All those years, he’d never harmed her,
not once, until she refused to leave him
and he dragged her by the arm
through the crowd to the lifeboat.
She remembers craning her neck to see past
the hats of the women around her,
how the last time she saw him
the haze of lace atop another woman’s head
made it seem like a giant spider’s web
had caught him and the ship.
In the weeks that followed, she kept massaging
her arm, watching the bruise change colour.
It wasn’t until it faded away
that she believed everything:
the ship sank after the iceberg hit,
her husband never would again.
* * *
STEWARD JOHNSTON
As if he worried the women in lifeboat No. 2
would succumb to scurvy,
Steward Johnston filled his pockets with oranges
and later watched as an assembly line
of cold hands passed the small orbs around.
One woman thought it strange to be eating
oranges in the dark and struggled
to peel the skin with her numb fingers,
her taste buds unable to decipher
any sweetness beneath the salt.
* * *
SOMEONE'S LUCKY PENNY
slipped out
of his pocket
and drifted
down
for two
hours
IV. Voices
SECOND OFFICER CHARLES LIGHTOLLER
What I remember that night—
what I will remember as long as I live—
is the people crying out to each other
as the stern began to plunge down.
I heard people crying
I love you.
* * *
STEWARDESS VIOLET JESSOP
A few cries came to us across the water,
then silence, as the ship seemed to right herself
like a hurt animal with a broken back.
She settled for a few minutes,
but one more deck of lighted ports
disappeared.
Then she went down
by the head with a thundering roar
of underwater explosions,
our proud ship,
our beautiful Titanic
gone to her doom.
* * *
LAWRENCE BEESLEY
It was a noise no one had heard before
and no one wishes to hear again.
It was stupefying, stupendous
as it came to us along the water.
It was if all the heavy things
one could think of
had been thrown downstairs
from the top of a house,
smashing each other, and the stairs
and everything in the way.
* * *
EVA HART
When we were in the boat rowing away,
then we could hear the panic,
of people rushing about on the deck
and screaming and looking for lifeboats.
Oh it was dreadful!
The bow went down first and the stern stuck up
in the ocean for what seemed to me a long time,
of course it wasn’t, but it stood out stark
against the sky and then heeled over and went down.
You could hear the people screaming and thrashing about.
I remember saying to my mother once
how dreadful that noise was
and I always remember her reply, she said
yes, but think back about the silence that followed,
because all of a sudden it wasn’t there—
the ship wasn’t there, the lights weren’t there
and the cries weren’t there.
* * *
COLONEL ARCHIBALD GRACIE IV
There arose to the sky
the most horrible sounds
ever heard by mortal man
except by those of us
who survived this terrible tragedy.
The agonizing cries of death
from over a thousand throats,
the wails and groans
of suffering,
none of us will ever forget
to our dying day.
V. Impact
CARPATHIA
By chance the Carpathia’s wireless operator
kept his headphones on
while undressing before bed
and in what should have been the last moments
of his long shift, he overheard messages
destined for the great ship.
Come at once.
We have struck an ice berg.
It’s C.Q.D., Old Man.
When her Captain learned of the disaster,
he ordered heating and hot water turned off
to conserve as much steam as possible,
so that her passengers,
scheduled for sunny Gibraltar,
awoke to cold cabins.
Although designed for only 14.5 knots,
she conjured up 17.5 that night
as she rushed to the rescue.
As she grew closer to the scene,
the Captain ordered rockets fired
every fifteen minutes
as a navigational tool for any lifeboats,
but mostly as inspiration
for those who’d spent all night in the dark.
When she arrived at four a.m.,
her crew couldn’t believe
all that remained of the world’s largest ship
lay before them in the wreckage
floating amongst the ice
and the lifeboats that speckled the sea.
Surely, there must be something else,
they thought, how could she
just disappear?
* * *
FIRST MEMORIAL
Even the children knew not to play
around the mountain of lifejackets
piled on the Carpathia’s deck.
How strange they seemed empty,
lifeless on top of lifeless,
their collars looking more and more
like holes.
* * *
ROSA ABBOTT
While Rosa Abbott contemplated
how her family might still be together
had her arms only been stronger—
her sons once again pulled from her body,
into the Atlantic cold and un-amniotic—
a fellow passenger combed Rosa’s hair,
stroke after stroke, determined to untangle
the piece of cork that lodged itself
while she’d struggled to stay afloat.
It took a long time and with each stroke,
again and again, the repetition lulled them
like the soft strophe of a child’s song.
* * *
THE YOUNG WIDOW
Of all the widows, newlywed Mary Marvin
had the unfortunate distinction
of being able to watch
her wedding after the fact,
for her husband’s father owned
a motion picture company
and made theirs the first wedding
filmed for all to see.
Although she would see her eighteen-year-old self
grow older over the years,
her nineteen-year-old groom was forever
on a film loop, never to change.
* * *
THE CARVER
His wife remarked he’d developed
a carver’s tick where he gently blew
on everything he cared for
as if fine sawdust impeded his view—
be it of her bedtime body or his daughter’s forehead.
As a child he whittled away at sticks,
non-stop it seemed, so that his mother teased
whenever she needed to find him
she just followed the trail
of his fresh wood shavings.
His father nicknamed him the termite
and his sisters chastised
for all the wooden bits
they found
in their petticoats and frilly dresses.
When he grew up a master carver,
it seemed a perfect fit,
like the way Cinderella’s elegant foot
found a matching slipper,
only this time made of wood.
During his years at Harland and Wolff
he dreamed in the curlicues
and elaborate patterns handcrafted
into the oak panels and staircases
that made First Class first class.
The day he learned of the sinking
he felt an ache not only in his heart,
but in his fingers and in his lips
as he blew away at the non-existent
sawdust, and cried.
* * *
NEW YORK
Out in the harbour, one reporter chartered a boat
to shadow the rescue ship,
used a megaphone to tempt the crew
with the promise of a few month’s pay
to give an exclusive interview
by jumping overboard and swimming to him.
Thirty thousand gathered that night around the pier,
more than a full house
at major league baseball’s Hilltop Park.
Some showed up to confirm
the fate of their loved ones,
others just hoped to satisfy their curiosity
catch a glimpse of the survivors,
the famous, the infamous,
all that spectacle and pain.
* * *
GROUP PHOTOGRAPH, SOUTHAMPTON
Someone thought it a good idea to document
the devastation further—as if numbers weren’t
vivid enough—the photographer moving them,
boys in back, girls out front,
each of them a relative
of a lost Titanic crewman.
It’s the same sort of photograph taken
after coal mine disasters or when an entire fleet
from a fishing village goes missing—
in every photograph there’s always
an older sister holding a younger sibling
or boys almost old enough for a father to teach them
how to shave. In every photograph there’s always
a young girl with a big smile,
just an ordinary girl
smiling.
* * *
THE CABLE-SHIP MACKAY-BENNETT
Although it seemed a cruel irony,
the crew stocked her hold
with one-hundred tons of ice.
They covered her decks
with burlap and coffins,
enough embalming fluid for hundreds.
They brought along an Anglican priest,
undertakers who wondered
how they’d work at sea.
Not even double wages
or extra rum rations,
not even reminders
of how much comfort
they’d bring grieving families
could lessen their dread
of the moment
they discovered wreckage
and needed to begin their task.
They had fished all their lives
for haddock, mackerel, and cod,
but never for corpse,
so when they arrived on scene
they thought the white specks
in the distance were seagulls,
not whitecaps caused
by waves breaking
over bodies.
Men in teams of five
lowered themselves into cutters
no larger than Titanic’s lifeboats
and in the open ocean
they searched
for those held up by lifejackets,
many with arms outstretched
like sleep walkers,
though they’d never wake again.
Row, situate, grab, and hoist.
Row, situate, grab, and hoist.
Row, situate, grab, and hoist.
They retrieved over 300,
including a young boy,
no more than two years old.
In Halifax, one newspaper
nicknamed her The Death Ship,
as if she were the root
of the tragedy,
and not just another messenger
forever changed
by the knowledge
she brought back
to shore.
* * *
TEN MINUTES FAST
He always prided himself on being timely,
set his pocket watch ten minutes fast,
a trait the men in his family shared
along with broad shoulders, dimpled chins,
and a taste for adventure.
Had he travelled with his father or brothers
the embalmer who found him
might not have been surprised
to see the pocket watch indicate two-thirty—
ten minutes after the Titanic went down—
but as he travelled alone,
his was the only watch out of step.
At first the embalmer pondered how
he’d cheated the ocean of those precious minutes—
whether he’d stayed afloat
atop a piece of wreckage or treaded water
&n
bsp; with the watch held over his head—
then, in an indignity specific to his family,
the embalmer declared he’d arrived late.
* * *
THE EMBALMER'S DAUGHTER
Her mother once explained
it was like playing dollies,
dressing people up in their Sunday best,
pretty as a picture, her father’s hard work
helping everyone remember
how much they loved someone.
She thought of this whenever
children threw spitballs or rocks,
pulled the ribbons from her hair,
or teased that she smelled like a corpse.
No matter how fragrant the soaps
or expensive the perfumes,
it was if they could smell
the disinfectant and formaldehyde
that followed her family
as fish smell follows fishermen.
When word spread that the boat
filled with the Titanic dead
would soon return to Halifax,
she thought of her taunting classmates
and her father’s hands working hard
to make things beautiful again.