On the ocean waterborne,
Drifts lonely and forlorn,
A sole ship faring forth,
Its load bare of any worth.
Its bowels dark and antic,
It sails straight towards the Arctic.

For although it has no destination,
It is in the ice that lies its termination.
Yet, ever carried by the tides,
In time they are all what decides,
What fate the ship will betide.

The vessel is surrendered to kismet;
Which strong gales batter and buffet;
Its hull becomes a plaything of the billows
Which idly wash against it below.

And as it is shifted by its surge,
The wind softly moans a mournful dirge.
Its sough sings a plaintive elegie,
Bewailing the sadness of this tragedy.

For wherever this ship will glide,
Nowhere will it find a place to hide;
For far worse than the strongest winds,
Are the forceful storms that rage within.

For many restless years,
Of misery and tears,
In troubled waters it swims,
Carried only by the weathers’ whims.
For days it may not shift,
For forever it is hopelessly adrift.
Yet its debility is not shiftlessness,
But the palsy of listlessness.

Now it is long derelict
As the voice of its silence depicts.
For its very destiny was undone,
When the ship was left and abandoned.
Inside everything was quiet,
And not a soul could be espied:
When Aeolus meant no ill,
All was perfectly still.

Yet, from deep within its bowels
Now and then emerged anguished howls.
All then resounded with their echoes,
As the ship itself trembled with throes.

For one room was not vacant;
One man was still here.
Once he was in command,
Now having lost all he held dear.
Only the captain had remained,
Though fate had left him much pained.

Here the lone captain languished.
Surviving, yet ever anguished.
He’d lived here for many years,
Yet ever tortured by his fears.
For in his head sorrow resounded,
When with pain his very soul was pounded.
And though it did not show on his face,
Inside, his very spirit was ablaze.

Crestfallen and tired,
To his cabin he had retired.
There was perfect silence,
Which he dared with defiance.

For long ago he had sworn,
Though sad and careworn,
That one day he’d see his journey through.
But now, he knew that it could not come true.

Now, he knew it was naivety.
For, ever in fear of mutiny,
One night he slew
The bulk of his own crew.
By day the rest had fled;
Away from the ship they sped.







In doing so
He had his doom sealed.
Thus surrendering to his woe,
He had his own destiny revealed;
It lay not beyond the horizon,
But beneath in the ocean.

All that can still save the ship is chance;
For its fate is wholly in its control.
But once left to happenstance,
It dissolves destiny like vitriol.
Alone sits the helm,
Which the winds overwhelm.
There it is left to sway,
As the ship slowly drifts away.
Left to fate is the rudder,
Which beneath the waves slowly shudders.
Random is the ship’s course,
Now no more than a wooden corse.

But though now it may still drift,
Its death will come swift.
Soon the ship may founder;
In the waves somewhere yonder.
Soon the waters may reach its deck,
And nothing will remain but a wreck.
Yet it will be sunken not by the seas,
For the ship weathers them with ease;
No, its death will be more subtle,
For his own ship the captain will scuttle.