Reg Webb

had sailed the five oceans
putting out from Cardiff, Singapore, Boston,
he'd cork-screwed merchantmen
through icy shoals of Atlantic U-boats, then
in peace, piloted the fat oil hulks through
the maze of thè Haven's rocky green and blue,
with their confusion of pipes to nuzzle
and suckle the Milford terminals.

Reg, landlocked sor years in an armchair
in front of the tv's babble, stared
at his chipboard sire-place, the china,
chintz and brass, the gaudy gilt mirror.
Awash with bile, incontinent, bilges leaking,
his eyes watery and vast, was past pottering
with the roses and bulbs of the flat's
flower border, and shooing away cats.

Reg, becalmed in the straits of morphine
captaining his bed, full-sheeted, trim,
away from thè port of his front room and tv,
the photo at the Palace for his O.B.E.
floundering and sick of being ill,
sank angrily, far out in the cottage hospital.
He's lost now, with sire in the hold, and a hard stoke
sor one last evasive action, making smoke.