Day 5 of Jane Dougherty’s poetry challenge A Month with Yeats. Today’s quote is from The Wanderings of Oisin: Book One: “and like a sunset were her lips, a stormy sunset on doomed ships; a citron colour gloomed in her hair,” W. B. Yeats.

Below is the link to Jane’s blog: https://janedougherty.wordpress.com/2017/11/05/a-month-with-yeats-day-five/

My poem is called: SUNKEN SHIPS AT SUNSET

 

 

And down fell the sun

and drowned within the sea

and rough raged the wreckage

as the sailors tried to flee.

 

And down fell the sun

as a storm claimed the skies

and water stole the rafters

and silence crushed the cries.

 

And down fell the sun

as the sirens swam to shore

and laid down the bodies

of the lives that were no more.

 

And down fell the sun

and a sorrow filled the air

as the sirens sang their song

combing cords through golden hair.

 

And down fell the sun

as their tears flowed like waves

and they kissed the fallen sailors

on the sand, now their graves.

 

And down fell the sun

as the sirens said goodbye

to the men mortal men who loved them;

the sea’s sad sirens who cannot die.

 

All words and photographs by Damien B. Donnelly