The cloud-hooded sea tossed
A distant home-coming vessel.
Indiscriminate of her cargo,
He lashed his fury against her hulls.
Aboard their floating home the prisoners prayed,
Though the servants in secret anguish knew
That life for them had reached its end,
And, in their knowledge, sought no comfort.
The mark between grace and forgiveness
Had long ago been double-crossed.
By whom was not necessary to know,
And if it were, there is not one to tell.
From fear or from a sense of sin
Had each to a man confirmed his fate:
To live and to die in silence strewn
Across the waves of their merciless judge.
Among them men whom time forgot,
Whose children now doubt in their existence.
Whose words mean less even than nothing,
Whose actions combined tally less than their death.
They whom in malevolence drowned
Long before their watery grave.
We see not a man when to death condemned,
We speak not his name when he quiets himself.
Perceived among the foiled and fallen,
One who fell so another might stand.
He sleeps alone, outside of shame,
In readiness for the end he desires.
For always between the rogue and the rascal
Shall be found an upstanding soul,
Who cares not how his will be delivered;
Who is willing to wait no more to return.
