Titanic Revisited

Today the world commemorates the 100^th year of the sinking of the Titanic, the ocean liner that set sail from Southampton in England bound for New York across the Atlantic. Boasted by its makers as unsinkable, Titanic steamed across the Atlantic in its maiden journey with 2223 people onboard. The rest is history or historical tragedy, a stuff worthy of Greek tragedies telling the story of man’s hubris and the resultant fall. It is a story as old as the story of man finding its parallel in the Garden of Eden and littered in its wake across the journey of man up to be present day.

I too have my yesterdays to revisit and remember of years back about quarter of a century when i thought i too was unsinkable and unstrikeable, a thought as foolish in Titanic proportions as my follies. Foundered and lying thousands of leagues beneath the sunlight, i recollect the days when i used to make paperboats and set them asail in the monsoon poodles in front of my house.

On this day of the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic, i am sharing here a poem named The Sunken Ships which i had written nearly quarter of a century ago, which i thought would be apt to see the light of the day today.

                                    The Sunken Ships                             

Deep beneath the raging waves,

Far beyond the silent depths,

All along the ages through_

Sleeps the sunken ships.

Once roamed the oceans five,

Centuries and millenniums past

But at last to their unmarked graves

Being dug on the ocean bed.

No sunny light would wake them up,

Or any sailors’ hand would steer them afloat

Nor an albatross dare guide them to land,

Or an astrolabe to guide by stars.

The mighty Bismarck and Titanic,

A few among the unnumbered

The castles built on ocean floor

Haunted by our morbid thoughts.

Battle ships and peaceful ones

Once a time when sea went rough_

Thus runs the stories tough

Tempests wild with anguished cries_

Like a stone dropped in waters still

Swayed deep into the mighty blue.

Sailors gay, many a youthful ones,

Hope we, live in mermaids’ zone

From a bubbling death to bubbling life_

                            All along the sunken ships.