In an unnamed sound,

a tribe arrive with a waka.

They pull up on the shore of an arched-back island

and see stone eyes peek out from the water.

These eyes belong to an old god's

boat, long since sunk and turned to stone.

Some thousand years and a ship slips by,

the HMS Pelorus. The men on the ship name

the sound in its honour, and later people

plant pines, walk inland

through drowned river valleys.

A girl, struggling over rocks, asks what's in the

sound's name,

and her father who likes to have answers tells her

long before it was Pelorus

it was the shattered prow of the old gods’ waka.

Why did it sink she says but he's not sure. Only the girl

still sees whipped foam for lashes

round stone eyes that blink with each slow wave.

And Pelorus was a ship, the father's saying, that's

an old name too. A Sicilian peninsula, crowned

by Mt Etna, and underneath

Hephaestus and his forge, where everything

is burned, molten and remade.

The girl leaps down from the rocks

and she and the stone eyes stare up at the man.

Everything? she says.

Everything, the man says.