`Abandon ship all you who enter here'

(i) Noah's Flood

The known world, and the unknown, under water,
and by the mid-point, as one might suppose,
where things had got to heaven knows.
And had the scuppers failed in that foul weather
or had he struck a hidden rock there was
no other ground on which to run aground.
Then all was lost and no redeeming lost-and-found,
no memorial, come whatever time to pass.

A single window like an eye, reeling,
three tiers or decks but none to promenade
and take the air on, or watch the evening
sun go down, with a drink in one hand,
the other on the taff-rail. No headway made,
though the world go round, no good dry land.
...