Who Fired Up?


Who fired up the Black Ball Line? Who
Bought the canvas by miles,
Called for the timber cut and the pitch and brass?
Who told men to report for sea in the smell
Of new planks and tar?

Who named the ports, drew up
The frightening courses, worried
The storm-cloud horizon?

Ten thousand names are gone,
Fallen along with his own,
Out where the wild cascades tumble off
The map, at the edge of the world.

But all the sailors remember
The kind of man he was.