Professor Ahab's elegant in French,
but saltier in Yank: "I long to spur
transcendence in these scurvy curs!"
Aye, in tests his pupils unimpress--
beached, yelping seal-pups. And yet
O the fieldtrips! Once his students leap
through the oval portal to that alien sea,
peagreen-opaque, where razor-edge
bergs rise, not cyan or white, but clear
conchoidal glass-shard crags--out here,
his pupils seem porpoises to ME--
spot ice through that impenetrable stew,
dive in, swarm to the sparkling crystal
voids in the soup, swift harpoon-wrestle
jagged manifolds of latency round until
these clear solid holes in blindness are
coaxed and rolled to rear their noblest hill,
the sweetest spire o'er sea they ever can:
best of all outcomes. At least for land
creatures not full whale. Ice-ikebana on a
(sorry) Titanic scale.
|
|
How do Ahab's flock pierce olive murk?
I can only spot clear ice-halls athrust
Well above waterline, letting me deduce
Gibraltar mass beneath the muddy jade.
I'm seablind, but a fair ice-wrangler. Too
tough for a "razor" edge to cut. Though ru-
mor exaggerates. Only a mighty rigid hull
driven by hubris, steam, sail or wave
onto an errant mountainfang need dread:
the molt sea licks dull the ice-blade.
Moby Dick does not use bergs to shave.
But O to have these pupils' skill
at piercing that opaque green veil!
Not sight but sonar. A secret whale
Pings under human-seeming skull.
The Transcendentalist Dour and I
watch on beach. He peglegs upon
a wooden bench. Head eight feet high,
he glowers at flock. I tease the broody hen:
|
