The h2g2 Poem: Unfinished Journey - Ticket C2144

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Unfinished Journey: Ticket Number C2144

It is very quiet here.
The sea
is a world unto itself
is a world of fish and pearl
is a fine place to live
if you can breathe water.
We've been here a long time
but it doesn't seem that way.
For us, it is still 1912.
Gussie (my wife) and I, Joe,
together with the kids,
Lil, Charley, Bill, Jessie, Harry, and Baby Sidney,
went on board in Southampton, paid our fare,
forty-six pounds, eighteen shillings, it was,
we'd saved up, you see (and we borrowed a bit),
to move to Niagara Falls. I had family there.
An electrical engineer, I could work at the new power plant.
It was an opportunity we couldn't pass up. We could send money home for Mother.
Our little steamer cancelled the trip – coal strike, you know – so we ended up aboard Titanic, sort of by chance.
Wonders above, the great galleries
of the floating palace, grand, all of it,
the hold full of treasures, I saw them load an automobile so shiny,
a rich man's thing I hoped one day
my boys would know the use of, all the fine things
and fine people on display, and the grand, huge ship
kicking up the waves across the sea that April,
rich and proud and fine above
and full of hope in steerage.
The day was bright, the future promising.
The night was clear
stars shining down on us
as we struggled in the ice-cold water,
drowning, dying, not quietly,
calling to family
calling to Gussie, don't drop Sid,
Lil, watch the little ones,
hold on, hold on. . .
We couldn't hold on.
Calling to God:
I might have heard a hymn,
I don't remember.
We've been here a long time.
I can tell from the salt-encrusted ship
that used to be so fine.
Now it's a ghost like us,
silent among the fishes.
We've been here a long time,
learning to breathe water.
But for us it is still 1912.
We're still waiting
to finish our journey,
start our new lives
in that place of hope
called
Tomorrow.
When you pass overhead,
send us a thought:
how did it come out up there?
Was the future as grand as we imagined it?
Fact and Fiction by Dmitri Gheorgheni

Dmitri Gheorgheni

09.04.12 Front Page

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