/*

This is detritus from Shadow Rapture - and the most pretentious thing I've ever attempted. In the book I've got Will Shakespeare brought back to life and writing a play about the Battle of Britain in World War II. It involves a German U-boat, a British destroyer and an American patrol bomber. I needed a snippet from the play, and I chose a few stanzas of a soliloquy by the U-boat captain as the submarine approaches crush depth after being mortally hit by depth charges.

I found that I didn't have a big enough ego to actually put it in the book, but I publish it here for your amusement.

*/

Shattered flesh descends the soulless empty doom

Brackish blood crushed 'gainst abyssal cold embrace

My dying breath rides in crystal spheres,

Borne upon the water's weighty press

Breaks whispery silver 'top th'eternal swell,

Swept unmarked to steely skies, and gone.