CANTO 43 Mysticeti

 

Mysticeti: wisdom breathes

so the blue whale rises to the whaler,

lashes a tangle of lines and broken lances,

capsizes the longboats and the cursing seamen,

rushes the ship, buckles the keel,

rises in a geyser of snapped planks and spars,

the captain gone and the crew shouting

"The poem, where’s the poem?"

Compassion breathes

so blood enters wounds,

baleen grazes flesh, splintered cedar

showers to meet nails. The waters close.

On deck sperm flows back to the spade, the sailor

daydreams of land, the poem he couldn’t manage.

The captain by the mizzen doubts the quadrant,

stares at the main, broods over that final blue.