The Spaniard Inn

Glad voices of children's play at school
bell my hour. I exit, glad dog to heel.
We laze the Low Road. Open sea portside.
I watch for that-chance salmon's jump. Wood heights
to starboard. I pursue my greening thoughts
in their shade, an exile from exile alongside.

Pause at The Seat to swap chat with old seamen
stare lost between our harbour and horizon.

All Scilly ways and byways lead us straight
face to The Spaniard anchorage day or night.
Sailors have stood at this bar for centuries.
Robinson Crusoe began his voyage from here
where I dropped anchor after my voyage elsewhere.

Retired seamen, ashore for their last years,
salute my come on board, remark the weather.
Then for our day's forecast wisely refer
to telltale spiders' webs. We drink, then break
the bread of life leavened by common talk.
Our brief the local paper's headlines. We balk
at none. With ease we right each grave mistake
of State, in Sport, the outside world made last night
and, glass for glass, stand all downfalls upright.

That man and his three brothers torpedoed
the same day in the War. All four survived.
This one adrift alone for weeks, same War.
The postman daily walks his thirty miles
round here before they got those postwar bicycles.
That man's glass eye, a poke out by his ship's spar.
And so on for generations past.

Some historic pictures hang nailed fast
to these old walls. The Luisitania, sunk
off The Old Head, contrasts with the bad luck
of Captain Smith on his bridge, the Titanic
my mother would not sail on.
Her Limerick best friend Molly Dwyer did. She survived.
Then I was born. History's what's retrieved.

It took me forty years of world wander
before I shipped in here and dropped anchor.
Some voice amid life whispers where to scuttle.
My wanderlust lies diydocked here forever.
Memory's my seachart now, this pub home harbour---
where old and young sailors enjoy their gargle.

Our youths return with news of foreign places.
We hear them with unmoved, reflective faces.
We've been there, seen all, (lone that but don't tell
what we got up to then when we were young.
The talc's the same for all of youth's far flung
flight. Don't foul your homeport still holds our rule.
That old sailor told me what an older
one told him. Once home the world shrinks closer.

We tell the hour of day, day of the week.
by our each move: Who shows up first to sneak
his pint of breakfast and cheek off the day's
racehorses in the morning newspaper
who's dodged down Breakheart Hill to shop before
he'll drink the money here if he delays;
who's bailed out or painted up their boats
while waiting. Who's pulled all his lobster pots
and earned his day; our breadman with town news;
just now the Bike pushed past the window,
never enters. Another round. It's now
the hour that old seadog drinks up and leaves.
No local women weekdays. After Mass
on Sundays, with their husbands, some show face.

We each must have a place to sit our perch
where we may live our separate selves, or worse,
a while, daily. There we may lapse with ease
into our local dialect for talk
with friends. This we punctuate with mock
gestures to make a point when we so please.
That's when our dreams, conjured in innocence,
find likeminded dreamers who believe us
in this our public shrine of reverie.

I launched and sailed this boat, my life, as mine
to master. In fair and foul, through dark and shine,
I safely navigated many a sea.

But now, as the poet said in dream to me:
'The devil is tired. The devil a monk shall be.'