once there were fishermen …
look out here, across the shingle, and listen hard; you may yet hear the songs of the sea, of distant lands and history, now look again and stop, look hard, and take it in, for there will be a time when those men that are left shall say …
‘this is Dungeness; there were fishing boats here, which sailed out across the bay; these skeletons, these sun-bleached bones, are the wooden frames of those boats; and those slowly collapsing piles – that jumble – of straight-edged timber, grey and black, were the fishermen’s huts, the huts where they lived this country’s past and present … but not its future … in those huts, in winter, they sheltered from the black storms, when the wind came screaming from the sea ...
… you may even smell
the smouldering oak
from the sheds where once
the fish were washed in smoke ...
... now, its desolation is all
its haunting a dreadful thing
speaking of the death of fish
and the death of men …
and nothing left to sing’