Seeing the Mel Gibson, Anthony Hopkins version of  The Bounty last night reminded me of this piece. It is a reflective epistle to myself about the nature of the search for truth and well-being – perhaps unlikely, even impossible bed-fellows!

What is it?

Isn’t anyone going to say?

What is the trick?

or isn’t there one?

Is it, as I beginning to suspect,

as difficult as cycling up the side

of Snowdon say, in a blizzard:

or swimming the straits

of somewhere with one hand

tied behind your back?

 

How does one trim consciousness

as one would trim a sail?

How survive tempests, shipwrecks,

the doldrums and yet make some sort

of progress voyaging?

The hazards, its clear hit

from all directions as the weather,

never wholly, or even partially

predictable comes rolling in.

 And here amidships,

out of the elements, where the Captain

would command the crew,

there’s too much inattention,

currents of murmuring dissent.

Consider the house of ‘The Bountys’

Captain Bly just round the corner

from the Imperial War Museum:

even the professionals underestimate

the vehement action of the unforeseen.

An exact destination;

a resolute purposefulness,

an indominatable will

would all be helpful but the bo’sun

for one is prone to crucial lapses.

As for the cook and the ship’s doctor

(who’s too familiar with catastrophe

and given to periods of helplessness),

neither of them were present at the last briefing.

 As for the cabin-boy, the press-ganged seamen,

the powder-monkeys  - of course

they would not expect to be included.

 

Discipline is paramount:

the fact the open sea is always

the predator, helpful, but is there

nothing operating here above

the precariousness of Providence?

 Once the terror of the adversary

has been acknowledged there’s little

disposition from the poop

to take pleasure in fine-weather sailing:

to admire the flying fish, the dolphins.

 

And yet as certain great explorers,

sages and philosophers of the sea

have shown, there IS a style

of  Captaincy that maximises purpose,

realises a measure of wellbeing:

‘For the bounty of the commonweal.’

Is that it then?  Is that the trick?

Deliberate denial of self-interest?

Enforced self-sacrifice without reprisals?

The ‘Nays’ I think have it!

Unless there be schools

or Sea Academies which provide

on-going support, continuous study

before and after each mutiny, wreck

and battle fought at sea? 

And if there be such who am I to say,

(With such unruly elements

continually slapping, slurping

in the blackness of the bilge),

if any leadership committee

or board of governorship can ever come

to within one good stones’ throw

of the Holy City of Byzantium?

                     … Soho ‘93/’09.