Het is geen gedichtendag, maar Zelie moest een bespreking van een gedicht doen (The Sand Martin van John Clare, en zie of ge ook de twee volta’s kunt vinden mwaha).

Haar collega’s moesten andere gedichten doen, en ik zag maar een paar lijnen van het volgende, en ik vond het meteen wijs:

The Great Whales

Caroline Caddy

They open the bays of their mouths engulf
lagoons —
balloon like tidal bores to sieve
fiords through frayed trees
of baleen
or prowl suctioned depths
and let their food embrace them
long cobra-headed hoses
reeling back to leave
scars like moons.
We whistle tins into space
but they are the gravity kings
punching the coalface
reaming its tonnage.
We squeak into the vacuum
they muezzin whole oceans
life on the grand scale
engendering progeny the size ships
with organs that could grace
a cathedral —
cylinders of sperm
that would not be lost
at a fuel depot.
Washed up or revealed under dunes
after winter storms
their bones are like the white gears
of unthinkable engines
or petrified logs
nosing out of a desert
of vanished redwoods.
Once we found their earwax priceless
as we now find
the idea of them —
revelling in our new relationship
closer than we imagine —
the entropy of the organic
favouring insects.

Après nous les mouches!