For us, the lucky ones,
The horror of it lies in metaphor.
A ship that had no guns
Sailing with fervent hopes in search of pleasure
Opened its wrists on cold, hard water
And sank to depths a teardrop cannot measure.

It was unsinkable.
The burst hull berthed against the ocean floor:
Despair repairable?
Relatives of the missing endured too,
Heart-broken, but not any more.
Time, the old captain, pays off every crew.

The band, they say, played on.
We can all take some comfort out of that,
Going but not quite gone:
The journey, not the destination, matters
If mostly all we are is water,
Our conversation just the cold that chatters.

.

Disaster stories always have popular appeal because life itself is a disaster.