The Canteen

(Signal Hill, St John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, June 21, 2009)

At the old canteen at Signal Hill
Sitting on the wall staring out to sea,
The gulls glide gracefully,
Graciously soaring for me,
In the updrafts above the cliffs.

There is only the lonely distant sound of the sea,
Of the waves crashing on the rocks way below.
There is a dark, close, suffocating feeling here,
A mournful stillness.

I watch the dandelions moving to and fro,
The breeze blows their seeds out to sea,
An exercise in futility.

There are lost souls here,
Reaching out, but unable to fully break through to me,
I feel them around me nevertheless,
In eternal twilight they struggle for peace,
They yearn for the eternal rest they are unable to receive.

So long ago they sang their songs and drank their ale,
So far from home,
Within the walls, above these cliffs,
As the ancestors of the same gulls rode the same winds outside.

There is a darkness here,
A mournful hollowness,
Of heartbroken lovers,
Of men lost at sea,
Of drunken soldiers falling from cliffs,
Of lost souls infused with sadness,
Stifled by heavy snow,
Frozen in the cold,
Chilled in the ice-flows of time.

The feeling is overwhelming,
I can’t stand in any longer,
So I make to leave.

Somehow I know that the songs of the sad men,
 Who died here so long ago,
Will haunt these cliffs forever,
For eternity.

And mostly,
Only they will know.