And not just Maggie Mays never to walk

down Lime Street anymore, but you rambling boys

with your dog, your gun, your snare.

Let's sing it for Jimmy Murphy, Paddy Malone,

the likes of me, poachers, trespassers all,

Mary Johnson too who took the captain's fancy

so's he married her off-hand, hauled out

of salty Liverpool for a-chasing of the game.

Here's a curse on keepers, with their oiled

shot guns and hounds, damn their singular lugholes,

the periwigged beak with his mallet and posh words,

and a curse on this vessel for creaking and tumbling

on the raging sea, the ocean wide — all

for the snap of a rabbit's neck, the squeak

of a pheasant, the rustle of dew-dank fern.