The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled.
The flames that licked his fetid lips
Were tongues inside his head.
Conditions on that sinking wreck
As raging fury spread
Were no worse than so-called better days
When he buttered for his bread.
The cabin boy of anthologies, the innocent abroad,
Is he? He is… the keeper of our youth
But still no better off in printers’ ink
Than he may have been in truth.
And the price of colleagues, business deals
The ship of man’s estate
Is that most of us are cabin boys
Who all must stand and wait.
© BH, 1973
More trawlings from the past. This, I can only estimate, was written in the 70s. It could, in fact, have been in the later part, say 1978 0o 79. I have no recollection, just a vague idea that I was living in a ground-floor flat in Granton Place in Aberdeen. Even that is hazy. Hah! That was the 1970s all over.
Anyway, as you can see, it’s another parody of the Boy Stood on the Burning Deck - or Casbianca by Felicia Hemans.
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