Panic was easy enough to come by
Down by the Dogger Bank,
When the sea was full of dancing lights
And dim shapes that might have been God knows what
Torpedo boats or anything at all.
And they opened fire, the Czar's fleet,
On British fishermen,
There in the fog.
Steel hulls, men, boxes of machinery
Steaming from the Baltic,
Sent around the world
To reinforce failure:
The embodiment of Imperial Russia.
They weren't new ships,
Or even ships of uniform design,
The Russians didn't build in classes often,
But in ones and twos, haphazardly,
With the funds that trickled through
Layers of corrupt administration.
How to say it? The fleet was a thing.
It was an act,
Something actually done,
Different from the daily getting by
And carrying on
That a bureaucracy performs.
And when doing is the exception
And getting by is the rule,
The things that do get done
Reflect those who do them.
And that may be all they're good for,
And their only value.
And so Russia sent an image of itself
Through the English Channel,
Past Gibraltar, around the Cape for Asia.
Tied to the speed of its slowest ship,
Led by Rozhestvenski to their deaths.
And the sailors must have talked and thought
Hearing the engines thumping all night long,
Looking out the casemates day by day
Along the barrels of their guns
Stoking the fires
Stowing the hammocks in the messes
Serving meals.
They must have speculated,
Must have convinced themselves.
That there would be at least some self-respect.
Copyright Joseph McConnell 2005
