Trojan Gift

Apparitions play havoc with my soul digging the heavy anchor from the silt, hanging whale oil lanterns, flames aglow, exposing massive timbers of my ship. I watch one slave with purpose through the night pismire sweat streams down his chinless face cranking the capstan rusty from disuse hammering tar pitched boards back into place. White brilliant sails like angel wings alight, a maze of ropes unknotted and unloosed; this dream of pain with dead men for my crew shadows bent by the dull light of the moon. As consciousness and thought full gained on me of pagan oaths disgracing all the gods their Trojan gift returns me to the sea these remorseful souls' captives in my charge. No! I would not captain a ship as this mental refusal drove me to my knees the earth was rent and opened with a hiss and in my hand was forced a burning key. On it etched the face of these men I knew that caught my heart and stole my every breath their pride and sins exposed them to my view there are no secrets in the realm of death. I saw each one as then and now he was they lined the gangplank licked by hungry swells; I walked unsteady as one guilty does paraded through the very eyes of hell.