This is the sea the sailor saw
Which thrashed the shingle on the shore
Swallowed sloops and galleons whole
Yet gave up herrings by the shoal
The ‘silver treasure’ called by men
Built Blythburgh –a fish church then
Paid for its windows and chimeres
Though took back Dunwich in arrears
This is the sea of winter geese
Its gun-grey, bird-limed, heaving fleece
The Whale Road where the Saxons went
To settle Suffolk, Essex, Kent.
Cold currents fetched the codfish down
Filled ketches, smacks and fed the town
And sped the skillingers to bring
The oysters back from Terschelling
This was a sea of working ways
Of dirty, bleach-stained denim days
Where little ships from net-strewn quays
Their halliards rattling in the breeze
Set out with men in set-jawed mood
To turn their labours into food
Who knew, when fishing quotas bit
That nothing good could come of it
This was a sea of fish and birds
And all the figures, facts and words
On how its creatures disappear
Cannot convey its troubles here
–Nor any pious why-oh-whying.
The sea, the old North Sea is dying
And muffles in its warming swell
The tolling of the Dunwich bell.
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Martin Newell 18.10.03