Titanic: Strange Cargo Poem by Sheena Blackhall

No expense was spared
For the passengers of the world's greatest liner

40 embalmers
Embalming supplies
Tons of ice
100 coffins for first class passage
Canvas body bags for third class passage

The death boat sailed from Halifax
To haul 306 from the freezing waters

116 were far too badly damaged
To decipher identity
And those had a sea burial

Returned to the waves which snatched them
The strange, unearthly cargo
Journeyed on through the spectral gloom of the tides
Mothers, musicians, waiters
No more roughing it in third class squalor
2 bath tubs between 700
In death, the abrasive tides
Would rub and drub away all social distinctions
Filling both well-heeled and downtrodden boots
With equal speed, after the terrible
Tipping terror that was Titanic