All the references will be well known to Penzance aficionados; Pen Sans is the "Holy Headland" around which Penzance is built. For my attempt to convey what it's like to be caught in bad weather at sea see my "Gale at Sea" posted here on 25 October 2023. And for my memorial of a genuine Penzance/Newlyn "character" see "Roger Nowell, A Cornish Skipper" posted here on 19 December 2017 and easily my most visited poem: it's astonishing how his memory lives on!
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When the wind blows and the scud is low,
Swamping St Clement’s Isle,
When the sea surges as black as pitch
And the cloud’s as brown as bile;
Then’s the time to gasp your last
And groan for cart or sledge:
“O, haul me out and let me die
Down at the water’s edge.”
Rattle me down through Chapel Street
Sinking below Pen Sans,
Hear! the rain is flung in swathes
Roaring like falling cans;
Drag me on to Battery Rocks
For I’m to fulfil a pledge –
Soaked, battered, it’s there I’ll die
Down at the water’s edge.
So many! In youth we were forced from the west,
Urgent for work and a wage,
In London town I sweated and jobbed
As the years became an age;
Now old, returned, in Gwavas Street
I sit in my window’s ledge,
Waiting the end when I wish to die
Down at the water’s edge.
St Peter in boots, with his oilskins tight,
Staggered along Heaven's pier,
The seas were high, the entrance rough,
Boats off wallow and veer:
“Ahoy,” he bawled, “there’s few will enter
Struggling with sheet and kedge,
But are you from the west and did you die
Down at the water’s edge?”
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© October-November 2022
