Trelawny
Smoke hung on the sultry water,
Dirty rags under black lines
Lay on the horizon
When the cast off. What devil
Made them hoist the gaff topsail?
Satan brewed mischief in the air
As Williams and Shelley
Slid into the haze.
I drowsed in the heavy afternoon,
Woke to a scrape of anchor chains
And a general stir of ships.
Boats scurried to and fro
In the near dark. Drops of rain
Rebounded from the oily sea,
Craft under bare poles
Scurried past in shoals.
The night was gusty,
Thunder rolled, lightning
Flashed along the coast.
For several days no news,
Then Shelley’s water keg was found
Near Viareggio, and later
A faceless body, Keats’ poems,
Thrust open in a pocket.
Another body washed ashore
Three miles along the coast.
We buried them in yellow sand
And burned them after.
The sea rocked before us,
Watch towers patrolled the coast,
The Apennines’ marble crests
Looked us calmly over.
My machine consumed both bodies.
Byron could not stand the sight
And swam back to his boat.
The brains of Shelley bubbled,
Seethed as his mind had seethed,
Only the heart was not consumed,
And fragments of the skull.
The rest was ash I cooled in brine.
In the space between two buttresses,
Beneath the pyramid of Cestius,
In Rome, I built two tombs.
In one I buried Shelley’s ashes.
The heart I gave to Mary.
As for the empty partner tomb
Who knows how time may fill it?
©Terry Hodgson2026
Note: The adventurer Edward Trelawny was a close friend of Shelley.
Comments