From the poem "Tom Gunnell (1878-1959)" by Hilary Corke, published in the New Yorker, July 1, 1960.
This is my version, a far drift from Hilary's original.
Tom Gunnell, Tom Gunnell, your oar's laid aside,
You lie quite straight in your last long boat,
Your bow to the world and you're stern to the tide,
In a cabin of burnished teak you float.
Light and loose with your hawsers free,
Till you hit with a surge, the foot of the wave
And the shrouds hum full of the gale of the grave,
And the keel goes out to the sea.
But what of your cargo, my friend, Tom Gunnell,
Battened down shipshape in your hold?
The slap of the sea in the frosty Channel,
The night-wash flung with a scatter of gold.
A grass skirt flashing the fairest limbs,
Nelly, the Newport brass bed shaker,
The tip of the Horn in a rage of breaker,
And a couple of godly hymns.
Tom Gunnell, Tom Gunnell, your last run over,
Your poor old hulk to the graveyard goes,
They'll take your timber to make the clover,
They'll use your rivets to mend the rose.
But your cargo, that shifting and ghosting
Lies In the dark, locked hold of your cold brainpan,
Will always be dumb to the ears of man,
And invisible to his eyes.
Swing slow, swing deep, sea of the seaway,
Toiling bell of the swell,
Cry gull, in the air a-weeping,
Old ocean, you have his keeping far below.
Under your dreaming restlessness,
Under the sounding bell, swing slow.