Obsolete Liner

How ghosts of her defeated rivals must,
Along the driftways down the Dead Sea, mock
To see her twenty-one knots stayed in rust,
Her greyhound hull asleep against the dock,
Her hold, but for the rats, an empty cave,
Shafts that no head of steam could set in motion.
She dotes, in coma that precedes the grave,
Of statesmen, reigning beauties, storms, and ocean.

This rotted pulp of carpet came from Brussels;
This tarnished pendulum of ormolu
Brightened the swing of time in Lillian Russell’s
Pink-cushioned boudoir when the ship was new.
Gaiety, speed, remembrance, shining names,
All these are junk, — all these except for speed,
Speed set to fiercer records, other aims,
Than the safe crossing racing in the lead.

Also consigned to junk the ornate fixtures:
Baths do not run and toilets do not flush;
The paneling is warped; appalling mixtures
Rob silk of elegance; of comfort, plush.
As for the ornament, all decorators
Would scream, confronted with cut glass and prism.
All engineers would curse at elevators
Stuck between floors through faulty mechanism.

But only I saw the midnight procession
Of whiskered rats that minced with dainty tread
Down the frayed hawser like a grey confession
That now at last the rusted queen was dead.
Tomorrow her insulted corpse will quicken
To mockery of movement as the grapnel
Grinds in her flesh and hauls her to be stricken
By flame and drill into the scrap for shrapnel.