Homebound convoy

DARKLY the wet lands hold the horizon,
blunt finger-tips on the sliding sea's rim:
sad grey the convoy as rain-soaked ashes
of desolate pyres
on forsaken shores where bitter spray dashes
the thwarted fires.

We are ghosts from these our souls' strange funerals,
each his own mourner and ministrant priest:
dazed and uncertain now we are steering
to the fabled west,
thinking to glimpse between hope and fearing
the isles of the blest.

21 May 1945