Dropping the gauntlet. Entering the Tagus

By Beth McDonough

My dripping limbs I faintly stretch,
And think I've done a feat today.

— Lord Byron, ‘Written after Swimming from Sestos to Abydos’

Metallic. Yes Armoured, not yet learned
in tang, in clank. Just water's absolute grasp
               bigger than my body
                     any body
which is solid, which is certain I am not now
pliable, in my own control. Inevitable

                  cold become

                  compression
                  cold become

                    inevitable
This estuary cuts,  grips ornamented cuffs
                   inside its fist
               tightens, tightening
                                     until a little
                 articulation allows
      slight   relaxation.
Silks loosed on tide, and now
I can stroke out. Stroke.
    
                                   No  diable boîteux here.
                                              Flex beyond boxing, I can. I can.

                                                                 But nothing is finished until I touch land.

                                                               This river's width keeps the upper hand.



Inspiration behind the poem:

Essentially my poem addresses Byron as the 'Father of Open Water Swimming'. Of course, his most famous swim was across the Hellespont, and perhaps almost as well-known, he swam from the Venetian Lido up the Grand Canal...arm aloft, brandishing a flaming torch to alert passing gondoliers. As a (far less brave) open water swimmer myself, I'm very aware of what happens on entry to deep water and the very real initial dangers of cold water shock (which causes far more fatalities than hypothermia). We know that Byron swam in full daytime finery...which is nigh impossible to imagine now.  When he swam across the mouth of the Tagus, it was a very much wider, less silted and more powerful river than the one we know today (this being before Spain's intensive agriculture had drawn so heavily on Portugal's major rivers which all rise across the border. We know he swam directly into deep, and Atlantic cold water, directly from his ship. I cannot find a poem which references this particular swim.

My poem considers the initial cold water shock experience and imagines how the Lord (as any swimmer must) gathered himself to swim. The nickname is of course his own, referring to his limp, which was not a trouble in the water. His boxing, and extraordinary upper body strength are also mentioned.


Dundee-based Beth McDonough co-hosts Fife's Platform Sessions. Her pamphlet Lamping for pickled fish is published by 4Word. Makar of the Federation of Writers (Scotland) in 2022, currently, she's working on a hybrid project on outdoor swimming, and a collaborative collection with Nikki Robson. Both books are scheduled for publication soon.