Mine Sweeping

[Hawkman]

I remember the gathering of ships,
the Baltic morning, grey on grey,
shadows in the mist upon a sea of slate;
the exploding mine,
the watery eruption, almost lost
against the dewy curtain of the air,
the susurration of the falling spray
returning to its source.

I remember sweep runs,
the teleprinter’s chatter,
the Cox’n stripping mines on deck
with spanner, grin and hammer.
The rush for souvenirs; switch-horns,
phosphor-bronze,
highly prized mementos these,
we had to give them back.
An admiral complained
that our mines were somewhat less
than quite intact;
well, nothing’s safe from jolly Jack.

I remember faces from the past
lurking at the backs of drawers
in old photographs.
But recollections only serve
to show me where I’ve been.
So I turn to see the way ahead,
murky as that grey Baltic morning long ago,
with its gathering of ships.

[PrinceMyshkin]

As serene, calm and magisterial as this is, I wasn't at all prepared by any foreshadowing for



I turn to see the way ahead,
murky as that grey Baltic morning,

Indeed, the tenor of those sober, feet-well-on-the-ground lines that preceded this established a man and a state of mind so firm in reality that there was no reason to wonder if the way ahead would be anything less strong and clear than the present.

[dafydd manton]

Excuse me asking, Hawkman, but is this based on personal experience? I only ask because if it isn't, your research is unsurpassed. It has that real feeling of authenticity, I could almost see you, smell the sea, laugh at the grin on the Cox'ns face. Superb - as ever! Thanks.

[lallison]

What an excellent poem, and serious too. I didn't know you could do melancholy. This one right away reminded me of Thomas Hardy's famous Channel Firing: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/channel-firing/

Great beginning:

I remember the gathering of ships,
the Baltic morning, grey on grey,
shadows in the mist upon a sea of slate.
sets the mood, the scene, and pulls the reader right in.

I had mixed feelings about the rhyme in the second stanza. It peps up the tone a bit, and as a whole I feel like it works here. You can feel the action a bit more. But if you took the rhyme out, I don't think that would hurt your poem either.

You might want to revisit some of the line breaks too and vary the line lengths a bit. Some places read as if they want to be in a more structured rythem:

I remember faces from the past
lurking at the backs of drawers
i think varying the line lengths could make it sound like a more natural free verse.
But mainly, its just a great poem. Well written, and enjoyable to contemplate. lal

[Hawkman]

As serene, calm and magisterial as this is, I wasn't at all prepared by any foreshadowing for



I turn to see the way ahead,
murky as that grey Baltic morning,

Indeed, the tenor of those sober, feet-well-on-the-ground lines that preceded this established a man and a state of mind so firm in reality that there was no reason to wonder if the way ahead would be anything less strong and clear than the present.

Hi Prince,
Well, a man with his feet planted firmly in reality may view the past and present with considerable clarity. The future though, not being particularly well versed in the art of scrying, has always appeared pretty murky to me :D


Excuse me asking, Hawkman, but is this based on personal experience? I only ask because if it isn't, your research is unsurpassed. It has that real feeling of authenticity, I could almost see you, smell the sea, laugh at the grin on the Cox'ns face. Superb - as ever! Thanks.

Dafydd, Well I confess that my research was empirical. :D Glad you found it so evocative.

Here's the Cox'n doing his thing...

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/picture.php?albumid=921&pictureid=7484

Hi lall, Thanks and I'm glad you enjoyed it. I think you make some valid points and I will play with it a bit and see if I can't give it a bit of a polish but I don't think it needs too much tweaking. Thanks for the link to Channel Firing too. I've got it in an anthology somewhere which I dip into every so often.

Live long and prosper,

H

[Bar22do]

I love this so much.
It put me in a pensive mood...
It's too late for me to comment further now, but I'll come back to your strong reflection on time asap... Good night, and be well!
You never disappoint, but here you outdo yourself! Thanks for having shared this one.

Very best... from Bar

[Bar22do]

I could hardly call it serene... Hawk. Your economy and careful choice of the words make your poem seemingly placid, but the emotion reaches the reader strongly, especially in

I remember faces from the past
lurking at the backs of drawers
in old photographs.
But recollections only serve
to show me where I’ve been.
So I turn to see the way ahead,
murky as that grey Baltic morning long ago,
with its gathering of ships.

a moment the N realizes the way ahead has inevitably the same frozen reality of that moment the mine exploded.

(the only polish I'd look for were I to revise :smilewinkgrin:, would be to reduce the repetition of "I remember'' even though it provides an effect of a tolling bell... I think the poem could do with at least one less)

I loved your poem which incidentally reminded me of the times I spent by the grey Baltic shore and of a wonderful Polish poet and writer Piotr Bednarski who lives and writes there (never much translated but one can read him in French).

Thanks a lot, Dove-Hawk, Bar

[Hawkman]

Thank you, sweet Bar, for your observations, and I think you are right, I could easily lose the second, 'I remember' from S1 by changing the full stop after, 'slate' to a semicolon. I may well do this. Your take on the closing lines is unexpected. Strangely I don't think of the moment the mine exploded as frozen, it's much more fluid in my memory, more like a loop. But my reference to the way ahead being murky was more to do with reduced visability, how the range of vision was obscured by the mist.

I have not heard of Bednarski but I will try and find some of his work. There are a lot of Poles in my part of the world so hopefully I can persuade one of them to do a little translation for me :D My father had a great pal called Marian Kozubski,* (the last of the Bloody Princes, as he once described him to me) but unfortunately long gone now.

Live and be well, sweet Bar. H

* worth Googling!

[blank|verse]

Very nice, H-man. I certainly enjoyed this and think it is one of your better poems. Good stuff.

The last stanza is very effective and makes the readers reassess what has come before – is it now metaphor / analogy? I think this is what I was getting at with my comments to your other poem 'Old Photo', in which you started with a question that over-shadowed what was to come (and with which this poem shares some thematic ground). If you did something similar here, it wouldn't work as well as it does.

There are some strong phrases: 'the gathering of ships' is great (but I don't think should be repeated at the end); and 'grey on grey' is gloomily evocative.

I think the second stanza is the strongest, with its vivid detail and characterization. I like the first stanza, but think it's perhaps overly poetic in context, particularly the word 'susurration', found in many glossaries of poetic terms, and 'the falling spray returning to its source', which I really like, but here it seems slightly inappropriate. (This makes it rather Romantic, Wordsworthian in particular, where the concentration is not on the object, but the subjective response.) There's perhaps too much thought, not enough action – unlike the nuts-and-bolts approach of the second stanza, which seems more apt to the subject.

A few niggles:
> I think describing an explosion in water as 'watery' is a bit weak.
> The line 'highly prized mementos these' I found a bit too colloquial.
> I have mixed views on the 'I remember' refrain. Part of me likes its rhythmic role in the poem; but a stronger part thinks it's a phrase over-used in poetry. And it is tell… - I think you know the rest by now!!
> And I think 'the backs of drawers' is a rather awkward phrase and could do with being smoothed out.

But overall, there's more to commend the poem than not - it was a pleasure to read, Hawk.

[Hawkman]

Thanks B/V.

Pitty you don't like susseration :D It was just the word which came to mind and best fitted my memory of the event. I think you are right in that I could drop watery. Funny, but I don't remember the sound of the detonation at all - just a dull thump as far as I can recall, and as I tried to describe, the white spray was practically lost against the mist, and there was a prolonged hiss as the spray came down.

I thought the change of pace into the second stanza worked OK. As for the, 'I remember' thing, Well, 'I remember' my late mother quoting, "I remember, I remember, the house where I was born" and drawing my attention to the fact that I was the only member of the family who could say it (every one esle having been born in hospital) so maybe I feel a little propriatorial about the line... :D I think the backs of draws sort of works, but I agree it's not as good as it could be.

I rather liked the circular closure of the repetition, "...gathering of ships." but you can guarantee that if you really like something, someone else won't! :D

Anyway, thanks for stopping by to share your thoughts.

Best, H

[hack]

Excellent Hawk (as ever)
I can smell the salt.

[Hawkman]

Thanks hack, the smell of salt far nicer than the wiff of Amatol and diesel fumes, that's for sure!

I found the last photo of my old minehunter on the internet a few months ago. She was up on blocks and an enormous piece of machinery had bitten off her bow. The splintered timbers looked like broken bones sticking out. I was really quite upset by it.

A ship is a living thing. I hate seeing dead ones.

Best, H

[PrinceMyshkin]

I found the last photo of my old minehunter on the internet a few months ago. She was up on blocks and an enormous piece of machinery had bitten off her bow. The splintered timbers looked like broken bones sticking out. I was really quite upset by it.

A ship is a living thing. I hate seeing dead ones.

Best, H

If this is not a poem waiting to be written, there's a nightingale somewhere that's been unjustly ignored...

[AuntShecky]

I suspect that with this latest offering, along with some of your recent creations, that there is a dominant theme surfacing. As usual, your technique is well above par. The LitNet was always good, but it's gotten even better since Hawkman came upon the scene.

[Hawkman]

I suspect that with this latest offering, along with some of your recent creations, that there is a dominant theme surfacing. As usual, your technique is well above par. The LitNet was always good, but it's gotten even better since Hawkman came upon the scene.

Dominant theme? Oh I hope not, Auntie that would make me predictable :D I only turn to my photo collection when I'm dry of ideas and I've only done it twice. (I think).

If lit net is better since I joined it's only a conincidence but as always, I'm immensely gratified when people enjoy my work so thanks a lot.

Have a good weekend, H

[hillwalker]

A great piece, Hawk.... brimming with tangible detail.

But the 2 lines that stood out for me, and that no one seems to have picked out, were

But recollections only serve
to show me where I’ve been.

which seem to sum up the entire futility of 'nostalgia' unless we also have something to look forward to

H

[Hawkman]

Hi hill and thanks, not just for your compliment but also for noticing those lines. But still, trying to divine the future and plotting a course through it is never a simple prospect, especially in fog when the radar's kaput, the GPS is on the blink and the chart is out of date. Then you are reduced to dead reckoning and swinging the lead :D

Cheers, H

[Bar22do]

Your take on the closing lines is unexpected. Strangely I don't think of the moment the mine exploded as frozen, it's much more fluid in my memory, more like a loop. But my reference to the way ahead being murky was more to do with reduced visability, how the range of vision was obscured by the mist.


Well, I suppose I have to readapt my vision to yours for the ending for you're the poet. But I took the ending metaphorically, as if "the way ahead" was altogether impossible, because, as I thought, forever arrested by (looped in) the traumatic event... and "a loop" describes exactly this: recollections always keep one who's gone through a trauma a prisoner of the shocking moment... hence my interpretation (strengthened by your return to the "gathering ships")...

As for Kozubski, it's a rather amazing synchro, for I have a close friend coming from the same family (very aristocratic) if not branch! His father was a well known opera singer and he himself is a successful architect in Paris... the world is small, what a discovery! :smile5: I'll have to ask him what was Marian's position on the family tree!

[Hawkman]

Hi Bar,

Yes, I can see how it fits your scenario and you may feel free to so interpret this way if you wish :D Personally, though I'm not particularly traumatised, not by this anyway!

You're right, it's a small world. As for Marian's position in the family, I suspect he holds the place of honour as 'Black Sheep', if my father's tales are to be believed.

Best, H