Ghost Ship
Dec 31 2013


The Titanic's sister ship
crossed without incident,
lasted 20 years
on the North Atlantic run.
I read that the rivets were bad
on the ill-fated vessel.
Or she was pushed too fast,
behind schedule
on her fêted maiden trip.

No one cries
for Olympic
the forgotten sibling.
As no one remembers
the well-behaved son,
who found a steady job, a dutiful wife
soldiered on.
But we can't take our eyes
off the spoiled child,
the evil twin
scheming sister.

You can chug back and forth
between the same 2 ports
in a milk-run life.
Or you can go off course
spectacularly
and be immortalized,
the charming rogue
who died tragically young.

But who has time
for the iceberg?
That played its part, then floated off

scarred, and listing,

shrinking bit-by-bit

drifting south.
Yet still exists
diffusing thinly around the world,
its molecules
in every drop of sea.


This poem began as a playful exercise, having been given an idea (in this case, a piece by Adam Gopnik in the Jan 6 2014 New Yorker), and then seeing where it would take me. I think it ends up having something to say about posterity. You can take your choice: the spectacular, or the mundane.

But I also think -- in the indifference of the iceberg, and its version of immortality -- the poem puts humans hubris up against the force of nature.

And the poem also says something about the nature of attention, as well as those who seek it. There is the boringly dutiful son, and then there is the charming rogue. We commemorate Titanic, but few take notice of Olympic. And no one gives the slightest thought to the iceberg: a bland generic thing, no matter how instrumental an actor it was in the tragic tale.