'The Cable Ship'

 We fished up the Atlantic Cable one day between the Barbadoes and the
Tortugas,
 held up our lanterns
 and put some rubber over the wound in its back,
 latitude 15 degrees north, longitude 61 degrees west.
 When we laid our ear down to the gnawed place
 we could hear something humming inside the cable.

 "It's some millionaires in Montreal and St John
 talking over the price of Cuban sugar, and ways to
 reduce our wages", one of us said.

 For a long time we stood there thinking, in a circle of lanterns,
 we're all patient cable fishermen,
 then we let the coated cable fall back
 to its place in the sea.

	-- Harry Edmund Martinson