Disaster Escapism

I whimper as I wade into the Manukau –
autumn spread her cloak suddenly;
summer is a memory.

I call out:
‘Fucking hell, it’s like the North Atlantic on the 15th of April 1912 in here!’
it is April, but I don’t really mean it.
Anyway, my friends are getting sick of the Titanic references.

The sun is shining, though weak,
and all I have to deal with is gooseflesh.
I am not freezing politely to the tune of ‘Nearer, My God, To Thee’
I am not watching from a half-empty lifeboat,
horrified at hypothermic chivalry.

Because that’s the thing – in negative 2 degree water
you’ll freeze before you drown. 
Your core temperature drops
and your organs go like dominos. Yes, 
exactly like Jack Dawson’s puppyface, 
dead already, slipping below
to join the majority of third class passengers
on the Atlantic seafloor.

But the band played on as the ship sank,
and the final song could have instead been ‘Autumn’,
a tepid tune with fiery streaks,
like the sky above me, as I swim,
I picture the musicians’ strings resonating in cold-thick air,
their breath fleeing in white puffs of terror.

More likely, it was the hymn –
coming from a band of religious men facing the end,
and many survivors recalled hearing it, or felt fear flash
when the familiar notes strained.

I watched some Mormons sing it on YouTube last night,
and fell asleep to an all male choir’s anonymous fleshy orb heads
floating above their tidy suits and hypocrisy.
But did Titanic’s band even sing, anyway?

Or was it just their lonely instruments
limping out over mirror-still water?
I know there were definitely voices
but they were probably screams.

I try to imagine it –
put myself in their bodies, sparking with panic,
and the generations of human fascination 
with them; their fate; that preposterous ship. 

It’s easy, really, it was long ago now,
and empathy never expires;
it has cold, historical curiosity as a preservative.

So it’s easy for me to dwell –
easier than having to remember other things, like that
this summer has ended; I am cold; this swim is over.
That I have to stop at the shop on the way home; or that 
we are currently living powerlessly 
through a genocide in Palestine.

Hebe Kearney

Hebe Kearney (they/them) is a poet and librarian who lives in Tāmaki Makaurau. Their work has appeared in publications including: Mantissa Poetry Review, Mayhem, Overcom, Poetry Aotearoa Yearbooks, samfiftyfour, Starling, Symposia, Tarot, The Spinoff, and Turbine. You can find them at @he__be on Instagram.