Whale Song off Labrador
Lights beat from a
Labrador sky
Nights beat with light from a Labrador sky
Night has netted stars in rainbow-mesh
And the Labrador sky has a beat:
Three-to-the-minute is the beat.
Water sluices ::
ten tons of blood
Water sluices :: along the decks of schooners
Water sluices :: deep diving dreams
Deep diving
dreams sings the little one
Deep diving dreams sing oars in oarlocks
Deep diving dreams creak slob ice and drift sky
Children
and old ones are now long gone
Not us :: Ten tons of blood
Three-to-the-minute still booming.
Did we dream them?
Wonders the great heart
Their little faces
Snow blossoms on slate
Their hands anemone floating – so tiny – so sharp
Some sank tangled in
their nets
Glowing as they tumble like falling stars through fog
Fingers kelping to the sky waves
Now part of us are
they
Rolled bones; soft sleep
Where are
the hoots and hollers?
Buzzing of words – water smacking oars
Lip smacking scoffs;
All those tears and sobs; the romps, laughs
Their fires not half so hot as blood
Their eyes – slits with a star in each middle
So tiny :: all gone
Did we dream them?
Yes, perhaps we did
Yes, certainly we did
Yes
'Whale Song off Labrador' by William
Gough
c. 2004
Inspired by the painting,
'Sounding Whale, Labrador Sea'
Reproduced by kind permission of the author.
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