Classic Poem

My youth is
Made fast
To the dock
At Marseilles
Rotting away
With a chain to her mast.

She that saw slaughters
In foreign waters

She that was torn
With the winds off the Horn

She that was beached in the bleaching environs
Of sirens

She that rounded the Cape of Good Hope
With a rope's aid

She's fast there
Off the Cannebière

It's easy to see
She was frail in the knee
And too sharp in the bow—
You can see now.