swaying their crenellated fans between the reefs and besides
you breathe differently down here.
I came to explore the wreck. The words are purposes. The words are maps.
I came to see the damage that was done
and the treasures that prevail. I stroke the beam of my lamp slowly along the flank of something more permanent than fish or weed
the thing I came for: the wreck and not the story of the wreck the thing itself and not the myth the drowned face always staring toward the sun
the evidence of damage worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty the ribs of the disaster curving their assertion among the tentative haunters.
This is the place. And I am here, the mermaid whose dark hair streams black, the merman in his armoured body We circle silently about the wreck
we dive into the hold. I am she: I am he
whose drowned face sleeps with open eyes whose breasts still bear the stress whose silver, copper, vermeil cargo lies
obscurely inside barrels half-wedged and left to rot we are the half-destroyed instruments that once held to a course the water-eaten log the fouled compass
We are, I am, you are by cowardice or courage the one who find our way back to this scene
carrying a knife, a camera a book of myths in which
our names do not appear. 356 VERSE 2022 [80]
[9] Cousteau: Jacques Cousteau (1910–1997) a French oceanographer and documentary maker who devised the scuba apparatus divers use
GLOSSARY GLOSSARY
[10] assiduous: extremely careful and well organised
[85]
[11] schooner: sailing ship with two or more masts
[20] maritime: living or found in or near the sea
[90]
[20] floss: trivial or insubstantial [21] sundry: various kinds [48] crenelated: pleated; ridged [56] prevail: survive [58] flank: side [70] tentative: cautious [80] vermeil: gilded silver or bronze
