Ship Of Fools Poem by Rory Hudson

“Be the captain of your life, ” the fat man urged,
selling dreams to a company of fools
who sat eagerly in rows of hard chairs
on a night that was bleak
with the waste of suburbia.

And I thought: Am I the captain of my life?
What ship do I own?
What crew obeys my will
to steer me through unwanted winds
to end on what shore, and where, and when?

The ship of Theseus was one such, not of mine,
but of a hero of Greeks long ago,
and in the great sea at the centre of the world
great deeds were done, memories were left behind too
now fading, now fragmented

like the ship itself, its beams and planks long rotted,
all these now replaced, and so the ship persists
without captain, without crew,
without great deeds, and without memories
to stir hearts in these dark days.

Like a bubble on the water of the river,
or the foam of the ocean
that bursts in a moment and is gone -
signifying nothing
in its watery vanity.

And the fat man droned on,
his fools engrossed in dreams,
as their phantom ship will drift on
without captain, without crew,
to founder on black rocks
in an endless sea.