A Double Feature by John C. Mannone, Frequent Contributor

Cutting Edge

John C. Mannone

            April 15, 1912

            An icy North Atlantic wind

slices starboard on the moonless night,

as the great ship’s screws blindly churn

through brine, making its wake.

                        No one could see

the ripper hiding beneath the black sea,

laughing at the thick steel plates below

the seam line of the unsinkable ship.

                        It’s cutting edge no match

for iceberg’s jagged teeth below black ice

which gouges open each compartment.

Mangled and flooded, there’s no way

                        to unplug them, let water

drain back to ocean’s swell. The great ship

lies still, bleeds ocean, breathes last

bit of buoyancy. Trapped servants pray,

                        fancy guests waltz

with upturned chandeliers until bow immerses

into the frigid, the stern, catapulted high, gyrates,

follows drowned music lingering on decks,

                        violas and bass fiddle,

along with frail cries. Exploding

steam stacks gurgling water, a wisp

of steam threads air, their resignation

                        as this metal casket breaks,

slips into the deep, deep black no one could see.

Nor that last flare, tinged with crimson

the bright color of hope, incarnadine

                        blooms on the black sky

or that pale yellow glow

            of search lights arriving too late

                        piercing the hallowed green waves.

Poet’s Notes: I am always saddened when I remember the Titanic, the “unsinkable,” which sank so quickly entombing so many in the cold Atlantic. I suppose that when the poem is turned on its side, the structure hints at a ship, but that would have been accidental and not planned. However, it is noteworthy that the indented lines form a kind of poem itself echoing the calamity. (Starting with “No one could see” and reading all lines indented the same way.)

As I reflected on this event over a hundred years later, I discovered a National Geographic article, “Unseen Titanic,” by Hampton Sides, April 2012, http://ngm.nationalgeographic.TERcom/2012/04/titanic/sides-text. It became my source material for a found poem:

The Titanic After 100 Years

The wreck sleeps in darkness, a puzzlement

of corroded steel strewn across a thousand acres

of the North Atlantic seabed. Weird colorless

life-forms, unfazed by crushing pressure, prowl

its jagged ramparts, a meticulously stitched-together

ghostly image. The site, a Jackson Pollock-like scattering

of lines and spheres, scraps and shards brought to life

by layering optical data onto sonar image. Titanic’s bow

in gritty clarity, a gaping black hole, a white crab

clawing at a railing. The entire wreck of the Titanic—

every bollard, davit, boiler—what was once

an indecipherable mess, has become a high-resolution

crash scene photograph, with clear patterns

emerging from the murk like Manhattan at midnight

in a rainstorm—with a flashlight. This gives voice

to those who were silenced, when the cold water

closed over them in two hours and 40 minutes

for 2,208 tragic-epic performances came crashing down.

At Luxor, the relics: A chef’s toque, a razor, lumps

of coal, perfectly preserved serving dishes, innumerable

pairs of shoes, bottles of perfume, a leather gladstone bag,

a champagne bottle with the cork still in it

and the exhibit’s centerpiece, a gargantuan slab of hull

hoisted by crane from seabed, studded with rivets,

ribbed with steel—this monstrosity of black metal—

an extinct species hauled back from a lost world.