At the Bar

– Drunkards of salt water, thirsty for disaster,

Derelicts do not dream of being ships:
Never does calamity forsake them
For the hush of the swift and the look-out’s all’s well:
Neurotic in Atlantic of a death,
Bereaved but avid of another’s breath,
Swimming with black genius under black waters,
And buried standing up like Ben Jonson,
Though eighteenpence is here total loss;
And Tarquin certain of ravishable prey;
While others grope the rails,
rigid with gazing down.