The Wreck Of The Caledonia

From here in Hawker’s Hut, the sea

sounds strangely dumb, although below

it pounds the feet of Sharpnose Point,

while in this cliff clad hermitage

(where future youth will score their names

and learn to inhale cigarettes)

the Reverend Hawker meditates.

A madness drives his view on life

but here he sketches homily

for Sunday morning at the Church.

The hellish grinding of the rocks

below plays heavily in his ear

though mewing gulls soar peacefully

on thermals rising from the cliff.

The wind whines through the furze above.

That night, the Caledonia hugs

too close to shore for safety’s sake.

The heavy sea remorselessly

thuds up against her wooden boards

and drives her onto fatal rocks

shattering her hulk and spewing out

her reckless crew into the waves.

Skulls split on granite, lungs are filled,

And life is dashed from valiant men.

The Reverend Hawker, being brought news

of sailors’ souls tossed on the beach

like flotsam battering the strand,

takes all his faith in God above

and wraps it muffler-like around his

heart and fits himself with gear

and finds the path that daylight’s shown,

and with his lanthorn in his hand

he scrambles down the rocky scree

to minister to parted souls.

And one by one he lumps them up

upon his back, the drownded men,

and with an unknown strength he heaves

the bloated bodies of these sea struck dead

all up the path down which he trod

and lays them on the churchyard bank.

A dozen corpses now bestrew

the grassy mound beside the lane.

And as the dawn strikes up the sky

and night winds drop and grey clouds scud,

he takes a shovel from the shed

and labours hour on hour until

twelve graves are fretted from the earth,

the which, like spokes upon a wheel,

he centres head to head

to radiate a dozen dead.

Their feet to clock face numbers point

though their time is up upon this night.

Then once more down the beetling cliff

he makes his weary way to fetch

the Caledonia’s figure head

a wooden totem, sword in hand,

to guard the souls here laid to rest.

 

He plants the ghostly figure there

at the centre of the watery grave

to mark the very fulcrum where life ceded to death

And now, the storytellers say,

should any on a full-faced moon

walk twelve times round the fearsome site

the figure’s midnight blade will flash,

come down upon the soulless brave

and smite them dead upon the spot.

But I have sense that Hawker still

stands looking from his pulpit cave

prepared should ever need arise

to step out down the rocky cliff

and act as deadly midwife to the drowning souls

that might fall foul of Cornwall’s treacherous tides.

Here is a link to Hawker's own poem THE FIGURE-HEAD OF THE CALEDONIA AT HER CAPTAIN’S GRAVE