The Evening of the Zeebrugge Car Ferry Disaster

Heading out of the docks, a lorry

turns full-steam into the road;

its headlights splash on windows

blinking at the evening news. 

Across the way, a telephone rings

several times, and receives no reply. 

Lower down the road, the pub closes,

discharging its contents like a sluice. 

Next-door flushes, shouts his children

back to bed. Yawning cars turn in.

We hear a ship lowing at the bar,

impatient to come in for the night. 

The clatter of a train sweeps the sky

like a litany of prayers for those at sea.

The telephone rings, and will ring again,

louder, and louder, probing black water.

(The flooding and subsequent capsize 

of the roll on/roll off passenger ferry Herald of Free Enterprise, 

on 6 March 1987 as it left the port of Zeebrugge, Belgium, 

resulted in the loss of 193 lives.)

(Additional note: someone on another site didn't know 

what a 'bar' means in this context, but I'm sure you do.)