Sailing under the flag of error

And, as it happens, low cloud cover

On a collision course with the unforeseen minesweepers

On board K-11, or K-17, turning hard to port

If not exactly on a dime

Or K-14, whose rudder jams full right, K-22 who slams into it

Then is run over by the oncoming HMS Inflexible

Who hears his name called, as if in twilight sleep

A second flotilla, led by HMS Fearless

Unaware the ships of the first have turned around

Increases speed to 21 knots

They meet head-on east of May Island, which barely looks up from its desk

Intuition breaks in two and heads for the bottom

Along with the wreck of the K-17

Whose crew is in the water

Feeling the warmth of the self against cold abstraction

No group of people has more in common

More fear in their blood than oxygen at this point

Unstable land, unswimmable water, air needing light

As it was in the chaos at the beginning of creation

Behind Fearless, and to avoid HMS Australia

K-6 rams K-4, which sinks with all hands

Remaining capital ships and destroyers of the 5th Battle Squadron

Bear down on the scene

On the men in the water

Whose eyesight has never been clearer, how cruel

I saw not it, but the place where it dwells

Chains of the wake around their ankles

Propellers tearing through them

Seven stars of the plough obscured by weather

Badly discordant atoms in the one place night seems to be pouring out of

Whose grandfather was a shepherd

How can he sleep in such cold

Face up or face down

In sheets of fuel

The unbreathable aftermath

104 killed, a conservative estimate

No enemy engaged but error

In the historical present, a modest commemorative monument

With its back to the sea

SONG

Ships arrived to harvest souls // I saw stones become a church //

I saw the church filled with gold // and the pit with souls who harvest gold //

I saw more fields cut from the forest // I no longer saw the forest dwellers //

As an egg to a bird, tree to a stone // I saw trees turn into ships, and sail away //

II

NO 59981 05825; 56.24324° N, 2.64731° W

Make your preparations. Supplement a lack

of expertise with curiosity undeterred

by the vandalized interior, histoplasmotic

pigeon shit, trash of its pilgrims who’ve written

on its forehead and eyelids their symbols

of blessing and protection: Pictish z-rod

(indeterminate), crosses Latin and Greek,

Mairi + Ian, Saor Alba. Iron and magnesium,

the contemplative oxides. Axis of

the main cave, NW-SE. You will see,

among spirits of the exhumed, the holdfasts,

will know the place by its local name

and your readiness repaid. Another landmark

fixed in the mind of the navigator.

He remembers a friend . . .

He remembers a friend

from his travels

dispersed atoms sullenly reconciled, I woke

to a human noise conceived outside me, for once

and a bundle over to which I hauled my body’s carbons

a griskin

hard bread