Before it sank it broke in half.
That’s what gets me every time.
Not the coldness of the winter waters
That are a numbing kindness.
Not the unthinking slaughter
Of workers who never got on boats.
Not the ships that never heard
The calls of distress, but the blindness
That never sees that truths come to us broken.
Before they lie silent on ocean floors
Before they lie, truths are always two-fold.
The one part which we let fall, frozen,
And the one part which we hold.