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Destroyer
Author Unknown
Over the green hills the
bay lies, and after the harbor the
sea,
And a grim, gaunt, grey
Destroyer is steaming there swiftly
and free.
With a roll that strains
her stanchions and a pitch that
peels her paint
With a roaring red heat
in her bowels that would make the
devil faint
She backs on the crest of
the billows, she washes her side
in the trough
She ships twenty tons of
ocean and then like a dog shakes it
off
Her seamen cling tight to
the lifelines, her black gang is
gasping for air
From messcook to skipper
they curse her, but no rank
outsider would dare
The smoke boils down on
her taffrail, the white foam unrolls
in her wake
The hissing steam throubs
in her boilers, for she has a speed
run to make
She lurches and trembles
and staggers, alive from antenna to
keel
She reeks of burned oil
and hot bearings and rings with the
pulsing of steel
Wild winds lay symphonies
top-side—below crash the drums of
the sea
And far to the west of
the sunset, green Isles call to her
and to me
She is brine-caked and
battered and crowded—they call her a
salty old can
But those aboard grin
when they curse her and each one
aboard is a man.
Courtesy of
Walt Urmann
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