Whale Song

- for Les Murray, Gwendolyn MacEwen and Edwin Morgan

Whale, I’ll be gone with the whaling song,

carry my body back where I belong.

Take my blubber and leave my calf,

and if you must cut me please cut me in half.

Whale, I’ll be gone with the whaling song:

I’ll be gone by morning.

Whale, there’s no porpoise to life anymore,

I’m trapped in this ocean and can’t find the shore.

The school is thinning, these boats are winning,

I could blub myself silly how they prize my jaw.

Yes, I’m sure there’s no porpoise to this anymore,

and I can see a black tide yawning.

My heart was never big enough for you,

The size of a car and yet I’ll always be blue

to you, for I’m only the size of a whale

and for all you care I can go to hell.

Because all that I do can never be true,

and my last dawn is dawning.

So take your sonar, your batty schemes,

your technologies of death and your echo-location.

Whale, I’ll be seeing you in the blue beyond of my dreams

where there are no boats, and death’s merely vacation.

I would air to surface, but it just ain’t my scene:

I remember a time when my brothers were calling.

This is my citation, from this cetacean:

post it in the journal of The Whaling Nation.

I sing my song to nobody's ears:

let the humans broadcast this to the rest of my peers.

Let my heart burst with economic inflation.

Soon I'll be gone: I'll be gone by mourning.

                             *****

It goes deep, deeper than you'll ever know.

Deep, deep, deeper in tow.

Water leviathan, god of the sea,

Poseidon gave his trident to thee

to curse my bones and still my song:

now I sing this elegy for everlong.

Rising to surface for one final breath;
life's only resolution shall be my death.
You see my fluke parting the waves
in the dark halls of the human mind's lonely cave,
flickering against the walls you see where lingers
the black outline of whale shaped by early man's fingers.

Now curse my bones,
hand me the spear:
spear my heart, remove this fear.
Deathly joy, make me seer.
Now hark, dark angels: I dive too long.
Mark this the hour of my final song.

                              *****

where are youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu? 
snnnnnfffffffh! snnnnnfffffffh!   
ouuuuuuurraaaaau? arrrrrrroooothereeeeee? 


grrrrghrrrrrghrrrrrghrufffffffffffhhhh! 
arrrrrrrroooooooooooo! arrrrrrooooooothereeeeee? whuuuuuuurrrrrallthaaaaaawhaaaaaaalesgooooone? 


brrrrrghrough! brrrrrghrough! 
bliiiipppp! bloooooiiipppp!

arrrrrrooooooothere? arrrrrrghrrrooooooooooothereeeeeeeeeghra?

hghhhhrooooooooom? hghhhrooooooooom? 
narwhaaaaaaaal! narwheereeeeee!

hoooooooolp! hoooooooooooooollllp!