The Epic Of The Shipwrecked Sailor

I. Abased and unique drifted I for days
Upon th'inviolate ocean, cold and moist
between the toes of my malnourished feet.
The Sun had rose and sank four times before
I moaned ultimatum to my hunger;'Desist or...'
('cook and eat me' died on breath)

At the World's edge, the campfires brightly blazed
Complex signals. For me! To small boys, this were no mean feat!
They surely were small boys like angels, for they found me shore
And helped me to their makeshift camp, and fed
my aching weather'd body 'til it bulged

And strained the seams of my poor rag constraints
that pinched me as they dried.
This multitude of boys were not boys- nor men at all.
Rather they were in-between such growth.
Clothed in green, like sailors...atrophied.

Yet most silent. Mindful of their condition.
Fitful stares, and limps and blister'd faces.
When I regained my vigour, I asked them
'Who be you creatures? Tell me of thyself!
My appetite for food you sate, not knowledge'.

One said his name was Pipkin, and spoke up
'We once were men- now 'beast-made-men'- some say.
Some call us Leprechauns or 'Leper-Corns'.
The latter suits us, for you risk your skin in staying with us.
You are surely ours!'

'How dare you rescue me, O little men,
Then claim me as thy prisoner by Fate!
Hast thou no mercy, hast thou grown so sour
that every luckless, shipwrecked soul you see
Be ever caged in this community?'

They doffed their caps as one, and bid me sit
(For much alarmed I stood, within their midst).
'Dear Sir, beseech you! Take thy seat and hark
Our story is a dark and bitter one
thou shalt hold want to falsehood, but believe.'

One by one, the tale, divided up,
was laid before me, to my disbelief.
Had not their earnest glares coerced my sense
I would have laughed, and branded it fantastical.

II. 'Two hundred years unto this very day
We few, we sullen few, were just as thee-
Fit and strong and cast in normal face
Contented, 'til our ship was lost at sea.''

"Good shipmates of the freighter VEILS OF LIGHT
We clung to wreckage, floating like belief,
That we'd survive the fury of the storm
While our charge, smash'd and batter'd, gnawed the reef.''

"In darkness, drifting, just as thoud didst drift
Until, somehow, we found the lip of th'sea..
None but twelve survived to make it here;
How strange- nay, how appalling the sour mercy!"

III. 'We beached ourselves, our limbs praising the sand
and gathered rigging ropes and barrels, all
that had been brothers to us those foul times,
then organised a hasty hunt for food.''

"We skewered a wild pig with a vulgar spear
that Reilly fashioned from our ship's nameplate."
So saying, the crowd parted round the fellow
Who placed his head in hands and sobbed his piece;

"The spirit of our ship was displeased
by it's cold furied murder, sank and rent.
By blooding up it's name it came aroused
from those dead timbers, once a happy home

And realised it's end, it's unmarked grave!
It then possessed the Pig. In it's last throes,
it voiced a curse at we bedraggled fools
for violation of the goodship's soul.''

"We shared the pork amongst ourselves, and ate.
Half-crazed, and ripping uncooked flesh with teeth,
We cursed the damned existence of that reef
and whisper'd in our worry of the hate

In which the swine had cursed us, in our tongue,
With force but held by truly righteous foes
whom retribution is a cousin to,
and vengeancea tag for a raw meal of men.''

"We slept as spent men sleep that night;
The uncooked animal we had consumed
in bloodied frenzy surely saved our lives.
But no, but no...for then there came the light."

"Come early morning, screams were all the air!
Some daemon saw us in our blood-soaked slumber
Destroyed our looks- for we'd been wond'rous fair-
and left us, monsters, wrapped in filthy skin.''

"Disfigured so as to shock e'en the blind!
Our very ageing, there, was dealigned!
And thus we stand before you as we are;
Alone in exile for our sin, forever."

IV. 'Bravo! A worthy tale' I then replied'
This curse, though, lies on you and only you.
Behold! Iam not thralled; the same outside
as when you rescued me, and I arrived.''

"You wish to go? Begone!' They clamour'd round
And showed me to their raft, a sturdy Sail,
But wading to the craft, a rusty nail
Impaled my foot, which crimson swam around...

The men sifted the shallow depths, the sand,
Lifted the faded wood, all spatter'd red.
The letters 'VEI' could be discerned:
Twas as if some ethereal, angry hand

Descended 'pon my head, and as it smote,
The watchers saw my body stripped to th'stem;
Restored, retarded, exhausted in the boat-
Exact in frame and face as each of them.