Ship-in-a-Bottle poem by Dyfed Lloyd Evans
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Ship-in-a-Bottle
Trapped within a painted realm
Tempest-tossed upon
A storm that never breaks
Nor becomes a calm
Though you are becalmed
In perpetuity —
No breeze to swell your sails
Save that first
Which raised your masts erect.
A miracle to those who gaze
Uncomprehendingly
And marvel
At your magic mystery,
The subtle mastery
Placing you &2014; so large
Within a space so small
Launched through a tiny portal
To never reach a port.
A bauble in a bubble
Its mirror of distorting glass
Which for an instant
May seem to some bewildered child
To make the small seem large.
Tempest-tossed upon
A storm that never breaks
Nor becomes a calm
Though you are becalmed
In perpetuity —
No breeze to swell your sails
Save that first
Which raised your masts erect.
A miracle to those who gaze
Uncomprehendingly
And marvel
At your magic mystery,
The subtle mastery
Placing you &2014; so large
Within a space so small
Launched through a tiny portal
To never reach a port.
A bauble in a bubble
Its mirror of distorting glass
Which for an instant
May seem to some bewildered child
To make the small seem large.
Each poem has its inception somewhere and this one comes from a childhood memory of great uncle. A former sailor he had this amazing ship in a bottle upon his mantlepiece. It was a clipper, if I remember correctly and the sea had been painted on the bottom of the bottle in which it sat. The vessel seemed to fill the entire bottle. However, the most amazing thin was the shape of the bottle itself. It was maybe seven centimetres in diameter but the neck was only a centimetre and a half at most. How had the model ship made its way in there?
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