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I wrote this poem at the same time as I wrote my last entry in here (Justified Homicide). At the time - after the explosion and subsequent sinking of the Piper Alpha oil rig, in which 167 people lost their lives, on 6 July 1988 I was still offshore in India. Many efforts were being made to recover the platform - and, in fact, 2 of the above number were rescue workers.
As an oilfied worker myself I wrote how I would feel if I were one of those. This was not congruent with the families and government, who wanted their loved ones back to bury them. In fact the facility was brought to surface and the bodies (which were recovered) were buried.
Unfortunately, however, throughout many wars, the seabed is strewn with corpses of men who died at sea and remains a watery grave for thousands of souls. This poem is purely MY feelings at that time - and even now, as last night's reading this came to the fore once again...