Mendocino County Today: Saturday, July 26, 2014

• Hot Week
• Dry Times
• Newspaper Turnips
• River Gone
• Dangerous Literature
• WPA Mural
• Politicians
• Catch of the Day
• Enemy Radio
• Gaza 2009
• The Gatekeepers
• Federal Buzzkill
• Water Waste
• Five Bells

THIS JUST IN! It's hot and gonna stay that way for a week.

ROUGHLY 34% of the continental United States was in at least a state of moderate drought this week. California is one of the hardest hit states, along with northern Texas and Oklahoma, according to the Drought Monitor. As of this May, the situation peaked with about 40 percent of the country abnormally dry. It's one of the most sustained periods of drought ever recorded for the US.

MOST of the County's newspapers are now owned a hedge fund called Alden Global. All of the County's papers, into the 1960s, were owned by identifiable individuals, none of them at all what might be called "progressive," but at least in a limited way you always knew who to complain to. Or about.

IT WAS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME, especially with hedge fund vampires owning the Advocate/Beacon, The Willits News, The Lake County Record-Bee, and the Ukiah Daily Journal, that the papers would be squeezed for every possible cent, beginning with layoffs of staff and ending with the sale of the buildings housing the papers. Those buildings are now for sale except for the building housing The Willits News. It's owned by former supervisor Tom "The Jolly Reaper" Lucier who also owns the town's mortuary where he enjoys first dibs on North County corpses.

A NEWSPAPER COMRADE asks, "One question that comes up: Who will ‘own’ the archives if/when all these newspapers shut down? Libraries I hope, will get microfilm archives, but I wouldn’t rely on corporate owners allowing time to pack things up properly."

REAL ESTATE salesmen can now see the UDJ ($485,000), Fort Bragg Advocate ($275,000), and Lake County's Record-Bee ($575,000) buildings up for sale on something called LoopNet — a website for commercial real estate sales. The block-long wreck housing the Eureka Times-Standard, as reported earlier, has been for sale for some time. It's listed at $2 million, and harkens back to the golden age of newspapers when newspapers were America's primary source of information with the whole show, from reporters to the presses under one roof.

ALDEN GLOBAL succeeds the Denver-based 21st Century Media as owners of most of Mendo's papers. 21st Century Media, try as it might, could not sell the papers themselves; Alden Global's plan seems to be to sell all the buildings, and then let the newspapers pay rent to the new owners.

Ukiah Daily Journal

• 590 S School St, Ukiah, CA 95482
• Price: $485,000
• Building Size: 6,000 SF
• Price/SF: $80.83
• Property Type: Office
• Property Sub-type: Office Building
• Property Use Type: Investment
• Occupancy: 100%
• Building Class: B
• Lot Size: 0.48 AC
• Zoning Description: R3

Fort Bragg Advocate-News

• 450 N Franklin St, Fort Bragg, CA 95437
• Price: $275,000
• Building Size: 3,600 SF
• Price/SF: $76.39
• Property Type: Office
• Property Sub-type: Office Building
• Property Use Type: Investment
• Occupancy: 100%
• Building Class: B
• Lot Size: 0.16 AC
• Zoning Description: BS

Lake County Record Bee

• 2150 S Main St, Lakeport, CA 95453
• Price: $575,000
• Building Size: 14,250 SF
• Price/SF: $40.35
• Property Type: Industrial
• Property Sub-type: Warehouse
• Property Use Type: Investment
• Occupancy: 100%

Eureka Times Standard

• Price: $2,000,000
• Building Size: 49,536 SF
• Price/SF: $40.37
• Property Type: Industrial
• Property Sub-type: Flex Space
• Property Use Type: Investment
• Occupancy: 100%
• No. Stories: 2
• Tenancy: Multiple
• Lot Size: 1.35 AC

THIS EUREKA LISTING HAS A BIT MORE INFO – maybe the other listings might get this info added, too: Operating Expenses: $24,940.08

* * *

BACKGROUND: MediaNews Group and 21st Century Media Transaction Has Been Finalized

Monday, December 30, 2013

Newly Combined Company To Be Branded as Digital First Media

New York, N.Y. (December 30, 2013) – Digital First Media today announced the MediaNews Group and 21st Century Media combination has been finalized and that the two Companies will operate under the Digital First Media name.

The transaction, first announced on December 17, brings together the two companies jointly managed by Digital First Media under one name.

The newly combined company has approximately $1.3 billion in annual revenues with more than 800 multi-platform products and a monthly audience of more than 67 million Americans. As the nation’s second largest newspaper company, Digital First Media is among the largest providers of digital news and information in the United States.

“This is an important moment for our Company and positions us to accelerate our growth under a single and innovative brand,” said John Paton, Chief Executive Officer of Digital First Media.

Digital First Media, headquartered in New York City, reaches 67 million Americans each month through more than 800 multi-platform products across 18 states.

For more information contact:
 Jonathan Cooper
, Vice President Media Relations & Employee Communications, 
Digital First Media

AN OLD TIMER WRITES: “I was in AV earlier this week. At the Confluence, it looks as if Rancheria Creek has stopped flowing completely; I saw only water pools and gravel bars. And it is only late July! This is the worst I have seen Anderson Valley’s creeks and rivers look in 57 years."

ED NOTE: The “Confluence” is where Rancheria Creek and Indian Creek meet to form the Navarro River.

THE TRIAL OF ULYSSES, 1920

That summer, a businessman named Ogden Brower had flipped through one of his teenage daughter's magazines and found the passage where Gerty MacDowell reveals her nainsook knickers: 'and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back that he could see high up above her knee where no-one ever and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight like those skirtdancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking.'

When Brower asked his daughter how she had heard about The Little Review, she said that she hadn't heard about it, and she certainly hadn't ordered the magazine — it was an unsolicited package sent like an explosive through the mail. Her father was outraged. He marked four of the dirty pages and wrote this letter to the district attorney:

"If such indecencies don't come within the provisions of the Postal Laws then isn't there some way in which the circulation of such things can be confined among the people who buy or subscribe to a publication of this kind? Surely there must be some way of keeping such 'literature' out of the homes of people who don't want it even if, in the interests of morality, there is no means of suppressing it."

— The Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Birmingham

PROGRESSIVE TURNABOUT

To the Editor:

Remember awhile back, when the US Postal Service announced that it was going to shut down the old post office on Oak Street and how our local progressives became unglued over the fact it was closing? And remember all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over the fact that the old WPA mural was going to be removed from the building?

Well, guess what folks, the USPS has announced that the city can have the mural back to display temporarily for two years on the conditions that the city insure the painting for $100k and pay the shipping costs of up to $10k to bring it back to Ukiah. And now, the pathetic, pretentious progressives at city hall are balking at paying the costs involved with the mural. Mind you, these are the same people who think nothing of paying anywhere from $25k to $41k to hire consultants. And, you must remember that progressives will accept anything as long as it's free.

Oh, and one more thing, the local progressives keep insisting this is “our” mural, but, in truth it is actually owned by the US Postal Service which, makes it federal property. And, good luck trying to get anything free from the US government.

David ‘The Jerk’ Anderson, Ukiah

ED NOTE: The feds already have it? We thought it was still in the lobby of the old PO. Clarification anyone.

LEAD SENTENCE OF THE WEEK

There are no American politicians whose views on politics merit serious consideration for any reason other than the power they wield. With only minor exceptions (from long ago), it has been this way since the founders’ generation passed. (Andrew Levine)

CATCH OF THE DAY, July 25, 2014

WILLIAM BARRY, Ukiah. Drunk in public. (Frequent flyer.)

MILES BLANKENSHIP, Piercy. Pot cultivation/processing.

MORNINGSTAR HOAGLEN, Willits. Driving on DUI-suspended license.

LUKE JACOBSON, Fort Bragg. Parole violation.

DEREK JOHNSON, Merced. Pot cultivation/processing.

STEVEN KAEFER, Modesto, Violation of Community Supervision.

RICKY MARTINEZ, Ukiah. Domestic assault, false imprisonment, robbery.

KEITH MEIGHAN, Garberville. Pot Cultivation/Possession for sale.

GUMERSINDO MARTINEZ-MENDOZA, Redwood Valley. DUI.

SARAH MITCHELL, Ukiah. Under the influence of controlled substance.

JOSHUA MORENO, Fair Oaks. DUI with priors, possession of pot for sale.

FAWN PORTUGAL, Elk. Domestic Assault with injury.

JESUS RAMIREZ, Cloverdale. Probation revocation.

JIMMY RUSSELL Ukiah. Drunk in public.

ROBERT THOMAS, Probation revocation. (Picture not available.)

AMANDA WILLIAMS, Ukiah. Domestic battery.

NICOLE WOOD, Laytonville. Pot cultivation/possession for sale, armed with firearm, possession of assault weapon.

DEPARTMENT OF UNREALITY: Listening to enemy radio — NPR — this afternoon, the “analysis” of Brooks and Dionne comes on. They agree that the Israeli-Palistinian “clash” is the fault of both sides, assuring the NPR audience of securely middleclass persons that the Obama administration “is doing everything it can to stop the fighting.” The two oracles moved on to a discussion of a proposal by the lunatic Republican, Paul Ryan, to end poverty. Paul's plan? Federal block grants to the individual states, including the food stamp program. Brooks says, “No one really knows what causes poverty. It's very complicated.” That's funny. I've always thought poverty was uncomplicated, that the poor were poor because they didn't have any money. Brooks seemed to suggest that poverty was the fault of the poor themselves, that education, fair opportunity, secure food and housing was apportioned equally at birth. Listening to these two oblivious characters I had to wonder how many people, even in an insensate NPR audience, understood how far removed from reality almost everything NPR presents is?

BOMB A GHETTO, RAISE A CHEER

The More Things Change…

by Alexander Cockburn

(JANUARY, 2009) Half drowned in the torrents of supportive speech and prose lavished here and in Europe on Israel's criminal onslaughts on the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza, one naturally tends to compare and contrast such paeans to those extended to kindred barbarities by Israel in the past. Is the amen chorus louder, softer or more or less the same?

If you stick to highway traffic through the columns and bulletins of the major media, aside from some passable stuff on the cable news shows, the flow of ignorant drivel seems as toxic as ever, maybe worse, since Israel has tried to empty Gaza of all reporters. The Israelis wipe out whole families, phone apartment blocks to terrify the occupants with boasts that their homes will shortly be blown up, and the Israel claque here stresses the consummate humanity of the attackers. Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post celebrates the birth of the new year by extolling Israel for being "so scrupulous about civilian life." Professor Alan Dershowitz dishes out congratulation for Israel's "perfectly proportionate" onslaught.

My mind goes back to Martin Peretz in 1982 inscribing in The New Republic glowing sermons on the doctrines of humanity instilled in the IDF, words written not long before Israeli generals gave the green light for the killers of the Phalange to go to work, disemboweling women in the camps under the indifferent or admiring gaze of IDF personnel.

Bomb ghettos and civilians die. I write as news comes that Israeli gunners have managed to shell and kill nearly 50 Palestinians, including women and children, fleeing a United Nations-run school in Gaza. I can guarantee that Israeli claims about Hamas's use of that school are already on the wires. Since no one is going to quiz him on the matter of bombing civilians, let me quote Hamas leader Khaled Meshal on this issue in a response to Alya Rea of CounterPunch and me in Damascus in May of 2008:

Rea: "My question is about using violent means. When people use violent means, inevitably innocent people suffer, children, not only on the Palestinian side, but Israeli children too. What do you think?"

Meshal: "Unfortunately, the insistence on violent repression by our assailants leads to innocent blood on the street. Since 1996, 12 years ago, we have proposed to exclude civilian targets from the conflict on both sides. Israel did not respond to that. When Israel insists on killing our kids, our elders and senior citizens and women, and bombarding houses with the gunships, F16s and Apaches, when Israel continues these attacks, what is left for the Palestinians to do? They are defending themselves with whatever they have. Our (Qassam) missiles and rockets are very crude. Hence we fire them, within their own capabilities, in reaction to Israeli atrocities. If we had smart missiles — and we wish that some countries could give us these — rest assured that we will never aim at anything except the military targets."

You say it's ludicrous to allow Meshal such self-exculpation? No more ludicrous, in fact far less so, than endlessly citing Israeli generals about the essential humanity of their enterprises, since Meshal confesses to the crudity of the Qassams, whereas the Israelis ladle out bosh about the "sophistication" and accuracy of their fusillades.

Of course, the guaranteed lethal inaccuracy of all bombing and shelling in populated areas ensures that you end up with some horror like Qana in 1996 (Operation Grapes of Wrath, launched by Shimon Peres before an election), where Israeli artillerymen killed more than 100 refugees, including many women and children, in the compound of a U.N. peacekeeping force. In that instance, the response of apologists for Israel was to claim that Hezbollah had staged the whole thing and planted the bodies there.

I suppose we should be thankful that then-President-elect Barack Obama initially declined all comment on Israel's attacks. "No comment" is probably better than the likely alternative: full-throated applause, a la Bush, for Israel. Then the carnage at the U.N. school moved Obama to break his silence, saying, "The loss of civilian life in Gaza and Israel is a source of deep concern for me." The fact that Gaza comes first in that sentence will no doubt prompt some angry columns claiming that Obama is tilting toward the Palestinians. Of course, his consistent groveling to the Israel lobby has been widely noted. Obama’s hand-picked mentor in the Senate, after all, was Joseph Lieberman.

But if the elites are as solidly part of the amen chorus as they have been down the decades, once you leave the corporate and political highways and get on the side roads of the Internet, the picture is changing. The precipitous decline of the Old Information Order is marked in the shift in opinion, noted in a Dec. 31 Rasmussen poll showing that while Americans remain overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, they are split almost evenly on the question of whether Israel should attack Gaza — 44 percent in favor of the assault and 41 percent against it. The same poll showed that in contrast to solid Republican cheers, only 31 percent of Democrats are supportive of Israel's attack, unlike their elected representatives. On Obama's "Change" Web site, there has been pressure from the Democratic base for Obama to condemn Israel's attacks.

That's a faint ray of hope. Otherwise, it's a bleak panorama. Israel's long-term drive to leave Palestinians a few patches of ground in a balkanized West Bank continues with no serious international challenge, as does its determination never to accept Hamas — the democratically elected Palestinian government — as a negotiating partner.

Why do so if you have the United States behind you and can haul Mahmoud Abbas out of his kennel whenever necessary?

What alternative does Hamas have but the rockets?

I imagine that Israel's intransigence means the suicide bombers will soon be put to work again.

LIKE MOST DOCUMENTARY FILMS, The Gatekeepers came and went so fast few people have seen it. I saw it, and thought it was so revelatory that everyone else ought to see it, too, especially in light of the events in Gaza over the past three weeks. Attached is an excellent and fair review of the film.

* * *

A Review of “The Gatekeepers” nominated for best documentary Oscar in 2013.

Most people are aware of Mossad – Israel’s super-secretive intelligence agency. Far less, however, have heard of Shin Bet: The even more shadowy brother of Mossad which handles internal security intelligence, and counter-terror operations.

The hush-hush atmosphere surrounding Shin Bet, therefore, is what makes The Gatekeepers a remarkable feat in terms of its ambitions alone. Director Dror Moreh, miraculously, convinced six former living heads of the agency to conduct on-the record interviews. These sessions with men privy to the most classified information, along with raw footage and reenactments of dramatic historical events, results in an admirable documentary which will most certainly raise eyebrows.

But if you’re looking for a movie that speaks optimistically of the Israel-Palestine conflict – look elsewhere. Each of the Shin Bet chiefs – Carmi Gillon, Ami Avalon, Avraham Shalom, Yaakov Peri, Avi Dichter, and most recently, Yuval Diskin, embody many contradictions. But what they all seem to stand firm on is, in the words of Shalom, the future is “dark”. One of the most disturbing scenes is the discussion of Prime Minister Yitzakh Rabin’s assassination in 1995, at the hands of a Jewish extremist. Rabin was one of the main proponents of the Oslo peace process.

What is up to the viewer, then, is to decide how credible the words of these six highly powerful, often ruthless but also introspective men, are. Here is where the contradictions come in. They speak calmly of the need to be ruthless, while Moreh swiftly moves the scene to the real life consequences, political and otherwise, of their decisions to kill. The job of the Shin Bet, after all, basically comes down to counter-terror operations. And none of the agency’s leaders shy away from this fact.

At the same time, Peri’s words, “I think, after retiring from this job, you become a bit of a leftist,” embody a certain sense of self-reflection. They also provide surprising insight into how much these men, who can all be considered firm believers in Israel’s right to ‘protect itself’, have come to be against the very policies which they followed during their tenure.

This by no means translates into a sense of sympathy for the Shin Bet chiefs, each responsible, in his own right, for carrying out several ruthless operations. The Gatekeepers outlines counter-terror strategy (or rather, tactics as is pointed out) all the way from the 1967 War to almost present-day. In this time period, there’s a growing sense in the film (as we move from one Shin Bet head to the other) that something went wrong somewhere; that this was not how it was to turn out.

The ‘something’, as far as a personal interpretation is concerned, was that there was a growing understanding as time passed that military solutions were not going to rid Israel of attacks of any kind.

Something that a viewer should not necessarily swallow as truth, however, is how the Shin Bet men squarely lay the blame at the feet of politicians. Failures are often dismissed as a lack of effort on the part of politicians, but one gets the distinct impression that the heads appear to be absolving themselves of responsibility for the failure of peace talks and preventing the intifadas.

One would think a 96-minute documentary consisting of six talking heads would end becoming a snooze-fest. Far from it. The Gatekeepers is a fascinating combination of wider issues in the Middle East conflict, seen from the intimate perspective of six extremely important players. Moreh weaves the two narratives side by side quite skillfully.

In fact, the director himself rarely makes his presence felt. His voice is kept to a minimum, letting the Shin Bet chiefs do all the talking. The movie speaks for itself and you don’t need much more than that for it to be fascinating.

While the Oscar-nominated feature does struggle to be comprehensive (covering over four decades of the conflict through a multiple number of viewpoints is a Herculean task), it leaves much food for thought.

In the end, as the Shin Bet hierarchy underlines the inevitability of Israel growing more and more colonial in nature, and Ayalon says, “We win every battle but lose the war” one is left wondering: What are the chances that the Middle East conflict will come to an end?

Very small, according to some of Israel’s most powerful men.

(Courtesy, Dawn.com)

THE CALIFORNIA CHAPTER of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws warned its followers in an email Wednesday that “since medical marijuana isn’t recognized by the federal government, a medical note or card won’t protect you on federal park or forest land within California. That means Yosemite, Sequoia, Joshua Tree, Death Valley, Marin Headlands…and all national forests (Angeles, Los Padres, Siskiyou, Six Rivers…),” NORML advises.

AND LEGALIZATION in Colorado and Washington won’t protect you there, either. “Once again this year, we’re getting a few reports of people being pulled over by rangers for minor traffic pecadilloes, and if the car smells like pot, they’re searched and cited for federal possession of a controlled substance. People have also been stopped on trails.”

CalNORML has a handy FAQ for folks who want more info.

A BIG WASTE OF WATER

To the Editor:

The Santa Rosa Press Democrat had a front page piece Friday, July 18 describing efforts being made by some Mendocino County citizens to convince the State to require Sonoma County Water Agency to reduce the outflow from Lake Mendocino due to the dangerously low amount of water left in the Lake.

Water flow requirements are complicated and difficult to understand, and some figures in the article are inaccurate; this is somewhat acceptable. But one observation made by Ms. Anderson [PD reporter] should be immediately corrected. She says that the excessive releases from Lake Mendocino are mandated “largely for fish.” That is patently untrue. The fish don't need these large flows at this time of year. These releases are for water recreation purposes in Sonoma County.

To put this into perspective compare the releases from Lake Pillsbury down the Eel River at 9 cubic feet per second to the releases from Lake Mendocino today at 160 cubic feet per second. This is a massive abuse of power by the Water Agency and a culpable wasting of water.

Guinness McFadden, Potter Valley

FIVE BELLS

Time that is moved by little fidget wheels

Is not my time, the flood that does not flow.

Between the double and the single bell

Of a ship's hour, between a round of bells

From the dark warship riding there below,

I have lived many lives, and this one life

Of Joe, long dead, who lives between five bells.

Deep and dissolving verticals of light

Ferry the falls of moonshine down.

Five bells

Coldly rung out in a machine's voice. Night and water

Pour to one rip of darkness, the Harbour floats

In the air, the Cross hangs upside-down in water.

Why do I think of you, dead man, why thieve

These profitless lodgings from the flukes of thought

Anchored in Time? You have gone from earth,

Gone even from the meaning of a name;

Yet something's there, yet something forms its lips

And hits and cries against the ports of space,

Beating their sides to make its fury heard.

Are you shouting at me, dead man, squeezing your face

In agonies of speech on speechless panes?

Cry louder, beat the windows, bawl your name!

But I hear nothing, nothing...only bells,

Five bells, the bumpkin calculus of Time.

Your echoes die, your voice is dowsed by Life,

There's not a mouth can fly the pygmy strait -

Nothing except the memory of some bones

Long shoved away, and sucked away, in mud;

And unimportant things you might have done,

Or once I thought you did; but you forgot,

And all have now forgotten - looks and words

And slops of beer; your coat with buttons off,

Your gaunt chin and pricked eye, and raging tales

Of Irish kings and English perfidy,

And dirtier perfidy of publicans

Groaning to God from Darlinghurst.

Five bells.

Then I saw the road, I heard the thunder

Tumble, and felt the talons of the rain

The night we came to Moorebank in slab-dark,

So dark you bore no body, had no face,

But a sheer voice that rattled out of air

(As now you'd cry if I could break the glass),

A voice that spoke beside me in the bush,

Loud for a breath or bitten off by wind,

Of Milton, melons, and the Rights of Man,

And blowing flutes, and how Tahitian girls

Are brown and angry-tongued, and Sydney girls

Are white and angry-tongued, or so you'd found.

But all I heard was words that didn't join

So Milton became melons, melons girls,

And fifty mouths, it seemed, were out that night,

And in each tree an Ear was bending down,

Or something that had just run, gone behind the grass,

When blank and bone-white, like a maniac's thought,

The naphtha-flash of lightning slit the sky,

Knifing the dark with deathly photographs.

There's not so many with so poor a purse

Or fierce a need, must fare by night like that,

Five miles in darkness on a country track,

But when you do, that's what you think.

Five bells.

In Melbourne, your appetite had gone,

Your angers too; they had been leeched away

By the soft archery of summer rains

And the sponge-paws of wetness, the slow damp

That stuck the leaves of living, snailed the mind,

And showed your bones, that had been sharp with rage,

The sodden ectasies of rectitude.

I thought of what you'd written in faint ink,

Your journal with the sawn-off lock, that stayed behind

With other things you left, all without use,

All without meaning now, except a sign

That someone had been living who now was dead:

"At Labassa. Room 6 x 8

On top of the tower; because of this, very dark

And cold in winter. Everything has been stowed

Into this room - 500 books all shapes

And colours, dealt across the floor

And over sills and on the laps of chairs;

Guns, photoes of many differant things

And differant curioes that I obtained..."

In Sydney, by the spent aquarium-flare

Of penny gaslight on pink wallpaper,

We argued about blowing up the world,

But you were living backward, so each night

You crept a moment closer to the breast,

And they were living, all of them, those frames

And shapes of flesh that had perplexed your youth,

And most your father, the old man gone blind,

With fingers always round a fiddle's neck,

That graveyard mason whose fair monuments

And tablets cut with dreams of piety

Rest on the bosoms of a thousand men

Staked bone by bone, in quiet astonishment

At cargoes they had never thought to bear,

These funeral-cakes of sweet and sculptured stone.

Where have you gone? The tide is over you,

The turn of midnight water's over you,

As Time is over you, and mystery,

And memory, the flood that does not flow.

You have no suburb, like those easier dead

In private berths of dissolution laid -

The tide goes over, the waves ride over you

And let their shadows down like shining hair,

But they are Water; and the sea-pinks bend

Like lilies in your teeth, but they are Weed;

And you are only part of an Idea.

I felt the wet push its black thumb-balls in,

The night you died, I felt your eardrums crack,

And the short agony, the longer dream,

The Nothing that was neither long nor short;

But I was bound, and could not go that way,

But I was blind, and could not feel your hand.

If I could find an answer, could only find

Your meaning, or could say why you were here

Who now are gone, what purpose gave you breath

Or seized it back, might I not hear your voice?

I looked out my window in the dark

At waves with diamond quills and combs of light

That arched their mackerel-backs and smacked the sand

In the moon's drench, that straight enormous glaze,

And ships far off asleep, and Harbour-buoys

Tossing their fireballs wearily each to each,

And tried to hear your voice, but all I heard

Was a boat's whistle, and the scraping squeal

Of seabirds' voices far away, and bells,

Five bells. Five bells coldly ringing out.

Five bells.

— Kenneth Slessor