Sirens Don't Sit Demurely on the Rocks These Days

The light awhile too bright to look,
the blackness folded in upon itself
and darker than the darkest text in a closed book;
the sea erupting with volcanic force.

Has she a voice to lure stars down onto the rocks?
the force of personality to stretch or bend
the wavelengths of the ocean's echoes, thus to send
the dolphins distant on a wayward course?

And is her voice, the bleep, bleep, bleep, the digital deceit
of interference, satellite experience,reflecting back the songs
of cultures long gone now to the long house under the sea?

Dig this! she says, Dig what the ocean brings you, dig
that the souls roll on, burrowing deep in the rollers 'till
the rollers break in a shatter of spray at the lone land's edge

Yeah, I dig the deep bass of the soul of the beat, the beat
of my soul that I meet in  the roll of the waves;
the rhythmic mix of infinite beats that I draw from the graves,
the watery graves of those from the land who couldn't be saved.

But over it quietly, softly there flies, flows
fathoms that many have set to nought: a new stress:
a trip, a tremble and treble, all mellow as sunlight, 
laid-back as spring - and forging like it, a new way to begin.

---

The title was given to me as I went to collect the morning papers. I opened the shop door as another customer said it over his shoulder as a parting remark. A remark right out of context for me, but it suggested the poem.