On a thickly-wooded sponson,
where the last projector stands,
The museum pair of hand-flags
hanging idly in my hands,
With my jargon
half-forgotten, of my stock-in-trade bereft,
I wonder what’s ahead of me
– the only Bunting left.
The relics of my ancient
craft have vanished one by one.
The cruiser arc, the morse
flag and manoeuvring lights have gone
And I hear they’d be
useless in the final global war
As the helio, the foghorn and
the masthead semaphore.
The mast is sprouting
gadgets like a nightmare Christmas tree.
There are whips and stubs and
wave-guides where my halyards used to be.
And I couldn’t hoist a
tackline through the lunatic array,
For at every height and angle
there’s a dipole in the way.
The alert and hawk-eyed
signalman is rendered obsolete
By electrically-operated
Optics of the Fleet,
And the leaping barracuda or
the charging submarine
Can be sighted as blob upon a
fluorescent screen.
To delete the human error,
to erase a noble breed,
We rely upon a relay, and we
pin our faith to Creed,
So we press a button, make a
switch and spin a little wheel.
And it’s cent per cent
efficient – when we’re on an even keel.
But again I may be needed,
for the time will surely come
When we have to talk in
silence, and the modern stuff is dumb,
When the signal lantern’s
flashing or the flags are flying free –
It was good enough for
Nelson, and it’s good enough for me.
|
A nondescript nonentity, a
limb of the oppressed,
I wear no badges on my arm,
no medals on my chest,
But though my past is
colourless, my future dim and bleak,
I cherish a distinction which
is probably unique.
Of all the mass of traffic
through the torture ether hurled,
By all the busy Tels of all
the navies of the world,
No morse of mine impinged
upon a fellow sparker’s ear;
I never sent a signal in the
whole of my career.
I used to wonder meekly
when control would let me in
To add my little quota to the
universal din.
Then realised my destiny,
surrendered to my fate,
Eternally to sit and serve by
being told to wait.
But once – and only once
– I found my baser self constrained
To break the wireless silence
I so rigidly maintained.
My weary watch was over, my
relief was overdue,
I gently, briefly, pressed
the key to see what it would do.
I often sit and wonder
where that blameless dot has gone,
If still through endless time
and space it hurries bravely on,
Disowned by its creator, and
dismissed its parent ship,
Unauthorised, attenuated,
lonely little pip.
But though beyond our
universe its travels may extend,
It still will bear my
fingerprints on reaching journey’s end
And beings in some unknown
world may trace it back to me,
As surely as the Flagship did
in 1943.
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