Kingdom of Weeds

The sea has a host of new angels,not ten miles off the Libyan coast where the boat sank,ferrying men in its heart as time carries fate,and drops them, with the living, on rocks the shorehas prepared for them.

Last night there were voices there,of lives being changed, those who made itbecoming dead also, to hold their breathat the bottom and not ever be able to tell their storyto fishermen who talk with waves at night, never explainhow in a dinghy a child is calmed by giving it urine to drink.They know gods and goddesses of the seabed, now,who dwell beside Poseidon in his realm of weeds.

Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (aka Brookes Slave Ship) (1808). Print.