The emigrant ship

Wide open ocean, headed southwest
Morning is breaking, all is set fair
Compass is pointing, but not the right way
From points in the east they have all come

Breakfast time comes, but the water is salt
A rock in the bottom, now a bottomless ship
Going back makes a right-angled turn
From east - now down

A new beginning from a stifling stranglehold
Young, old, and all, for reasons too old
A man and a cross, an onion-domed palace
Flocked to the northland, to now make the west

What's left is in boats, drifting northeast
Away from the new life, but for now still in life
Not all will reach salvation
As their coracles drift on the currents

A fishing boat here, another one there
Help is at hand, and terra firma beckons
An island and town, and a gravestone by a wall
All went for the new life, some do yet gain it

One boats drifts northeast, past the isle of the sheep
past the line of long sun, into the great cold
Never seen again in this life
Lessons were taught, but were they learned?

TITANIC
Describing the sinking of the emigrant ship Norge at Rockall in June 1904