the taunting echos of long dead dreams

i heard a whisper from a mousy man
in a half-dreamt dream i slept last night
that my destiney was born four hundred years ago
on a frigate out of Dover sunk full of black tea
in a bad storm near Madagascar

To swim, it seems
is hopless.

To sink,
was done
and long forgotten.

He laughed
and slunk off back into some London Alley
I'll never see
full of Jacks and Queens

Thick with muggers and blood, i know
it's trite to find a pirate heart in cockney land

And triter still
myself in a worthless sunken treasure.

"Shakespeare's dead, laddy --
but you can keep writin'"