(no subject)
This made me so sad. I'm still crying.
Francis, the only pregnant white whale in captivity, died last night of internal poisoning in her tank at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island...
--The New York Times, May 26, 1974
Too big & too intelligent
to reproduce,
the ferns will outlast us,
not needing each other
with their dark spores,
& the cockroaches
with their millions of egg-cases,
& even the one-celled waltzers
dancing pseudopod to pseudopod,
but we are too big, too smart
to stick around.
Floating in Coney Island,
floating on her white belly--
while the fetus flips its flippers
in the womb
& circles in the belly of the tank.
The last calf
beat her brains out
minutes after birth
& this one dies unborn...
Fourteen months in the womb,
fourteen months to enter
the world of whaledom
through a tank in Coney Island.
Not worth it,
the calf decides,
& dies,
taking along its mother.
The whales are friendly, social animals
& produce big, brainy babies;
produce them one by one
in the deep arctic waters,
produce them painfully
through months of mating
& pregnancies that last
more than a year.
They croon to their unborn calves
in poetry--whale poetry
which only a few humans
have been privileged to hear.
Melville died for the privilege
& so will I
straining my ears
all the way to Coney Island.
Dear Francis, dead at ten
in your second pregnancy,
in the seventh year of captivity...
Was it weariness of the tank, the cage,
the zoo-prison of marriage?
Or was it loneliness--
the loneliness of pregnant whales?
Or was it nostalgia for the womb,
the arctic waste,
the belly of your own cold mother?
When a whale dies at sixteen hundred pounds
we must make big moans.
When a whale dies with an unborn baby
of one hundred and fifty pounds--
a small elegy is not enough
we must weep loud enough
to be heard
all the way to Coney Island.
Why am I weeping
into The New York Times
for a big beluga whale
who could never have been
my sister?
Why am I weeping for a baby whale
who died happy
in the confines of the womb?
Because when the big-brained babies
die, we are all dying;
& the ferns live on
shivering
in the warm wind.
Francis, the only pregnant white whale in captivity, died last night of internal poisoning in her tank at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island...
--The New York Times, May 26, 1974
Too big & too intelligent
to reproduce,
the ferns will outlast us,
not needing each other
with their dark spores,
& the cockroaches
with their millions of egg-cases,
& even the one-celled waltzers
dancing pseudopod to pseudopod,
but we are too big, too smart
to stick around.
Floating in Coney Island,
floating on her white belly--
while the fetus flips its flippers
in the womb
& circles in the belly of the tank.
The last calf
beat her brains out
minutes after birth
& this one dies unborn...
Fourteen months in the womb,
fourteen months to enter
the world of whaledom
through a tank in Coney Island.
Not worth it,
the calf decides,
& dies,
taking along its mother.
The whales are friendly, social animals
& produce big, brainy babies;
produce them one by one
in the deep arctic waters,
produce them painfully
through months of mating
& pregnancies that last
more than a year.
They croon to their unborn calves
in poetry--whale poetry
which only a few humans
have been privileged to hear.
Melville died for the privilege
& so will I
straining my ears
all the way to Coney Island.
Dear Francis, dead at ten
in your second pregnancy,
in the seventh year of captivity...
Was it weariness of the tank, the cage,
the zoo-prison of marriage?
Or was it loneliness--
the loneliness of pregnant whales?
Or was it nostalgia for the womb,
the arctic waste,
the belly of your own cold mother?
When a whale dies at sixteen hundred pounds
we must make big moans.
When a whale dies with an unborn baby
of one hundred and fifty pounds--
a small elegy is not enough
we must weep loud enough
to be heard
all the way to Coney Island.
Why am I weeping
into The New York Times
for a big beluga whale
who could never have been
my sister?
Why am I weeping for a baby whale
who died happy
in the confines of the womb?
Because when the big-brained babies
die, we are all dying;
& the ferns live on
shivering
in the warm wind.