“The story in the style of early TS Eliot of Admiral Nelson in the battle of trfalgar”

Fog twisting, thick as cordage, on decks despairing  
With dusk’s dim press between the pitch and plank;  
Nelson—colder now than the crows that voyage, veering—  
Gripped England’s noon in palm and starched white rank.  

Trafalgar! The name biting through brass and breath,  
Where Spain’s red lions coughed in barrel thunder,  
And tall masts split, marbled by sudden death—  
The world, a catspaw miles and memories asunder.  

He stands, one eye on horizon’s burning seam,  
His coat cut by wind to the slow beat of doom;  
Men hollowed by doubt—yet bound to Nelson’s dream,  
While fate’s sharp prow knits silence in their gloom.  

Underneath the powder smoke, empire’s pulse shuddered,  
A thousand hearts galloped like oars against the foam;  
His signal: “England expects”—hope battered and muttered—  
Sank seaward as the ocean-time called them home.  

Unhatted beneath the sky’s cracked, stagnant dome,  
Unblooded yet himself, the admiral became story,  
Unfolded onward, past flame, past cannon’s chrome,  
A figure wrought in myth and mortal glory.  

And so Westminster keeps the echo masked in stone—  
An arm forever empty, a name shaped by loss—  
In shadowed halls, footsteps rasp alone,  
Nelson looks seaward  
beyond the nation's cross.

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