Poems By Simon Beechinor

This poem is deliberately written in somewhat archaic language. I wanted to see how such language might work in a relatively modern maritime environment. I served three tours on board 'Pacific Constructor' in the early 1980s. We rarely went into port and joined and left the ship by helicopter. At the time she was one of the most sophisticated ships afloat and employed several emerging technologies. This poem attempts to describe the onset of the southwest monsoon, which occurs between June and October each year, over the Bombay High oil field, situated 100 miles off the west coast of India.  We continued working on diving and heavy lift operations until one or two days before the monsoon finally broke. Thereafter, when it became too rough for helicopters to fly and even for most supply vessels to reach the field, we spent the many weeks of the monsoon on 'Rapid Intervention', providing some sort of safety cover for the entire field. They were long and arduous months. Ou

A rage of hideous screaming stirs and hastens me below, The cook babbles and pleads in a banshee’s cry of dread, He wears a hair’s breadth line of blood beneath his fleshy jaw, The heedless, hell-bent riot of sailors soon will have him dead. ‘Drop the butcher’s cleaver before you harm him more!’ The cook’s bloodied neck now caused me great alarm, ‘He steals our food, I’ll carve him into meat and bone!’ ‘Is it true, Cook? Speak man, before you come to harm!’ ‘Tonight, the crew have prawns, and all men eat the same!’ The cook now starts to argue, which the sailor’s cleaver quells, ‘He’s a damned and cursed liar! You might have the prawns, This thieving bastard cook feeds us the heads and shells!’ Photo: Chris Pagan on Unsplash