Lowry, Malcolm: At the Bar

– Drunkards of salt water, thirsty for disaster,

Derelicts do not dream of being ships:

Never does calamity forsake them

For the hush of the swift and the look-out’s all’s well:

Neurotic in Atlantic of a death,

Bereaved but avid of another’s breath,

Swimming with black genius under black waters,

And buried standing up like Ben Jonson,

Though eighteenpence is here total loss;

And Tarquin certain of ravishable prey;

While others grope the rails,

rigid with gazing down.