A Titanic Episode
So the ship will sail
For those who have the price to pay
And I have a tale
To leave here if I pass away
This journal will speak
To the journey I now shall take
From life here so bleak
To sunrise future that shall break
***
Come back with me to the cinders flying
To Kelly's coal yard and my story
My skin made black and my age is hoary
Time is hard and, no bit worth living
And over there not far away building
A ship of dream unsinkable real
And in my heart dreaming a fervent zeal
To be aboard with the sailing
I am a coal man, that is who I am
I know the heat, and I fan the flame
So I'm hired for furnace to move the frame
Across the deep cold Atlantic dam
I have no kith to love me, kinfolks gone
To America for a promised land
It does not matter then my blistered hand
I seek too another better dawn
What was it, I did not know, yet awake
Her sunlight hit the deck, made it glow
And my heart was warmed on the lake like snow
The first day aboard, my sugar cake.
And all I had to do was rescue her sack
From wayward trampling feet, then aboard
I brought it, gallantly and without sword
I cut the prejudice swiftly back
Kindness is the key that opens love door
And that was all my life did own
I went down, and she a next stair shown
The rich is well closed off from the poor
Would she forget what I remembered still
Her soft sweet skin, her sun shining smile
My heart young again, pining all the while
To know if her pearly ever will
We soot black ones never got a permit
To see from atop the eager sea
But she touring her palace came down to me
Found my furnace, and sweating did sit.
She preferred the flame to the faceless sea
The flickering fires, the frantic eyes
The tiger tenaciously stalked the prize
Of rippling muscles soft humility.
And so like birds we scraps of dreams sharing
From day to day discover afresh
The human worth in our human flesh
The long and sultry sweet of longing
My heart cast off from life boat and reason
Blackened her with accidental touch
And she overcame, into me rushed
The first kiss has so short a season.
Five days is a long time for love to grow
An eternity for a kiss
What did I know of icebergs and cold mist
What could my furnace not melt below
And yet this clamouur, and frights wild uproar
And all the pushy orders given
I got her a lifeboat, a boat's heaven
And wept that she was gone evermore
But she looking back, saw me there weeping
And jumped to swim back that dismal sea
Hence Diary my last entry to thee
For I must jump in, farewell, I'm going.
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