THEY say the sea is cold, but the sea
contains
the hottest
blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.
All the whales in the wider
deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the
icebergs.
The right
whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they
blow, hot wild white breath out of
the sea!
And they rock, and they rock, through the
sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas,
and through the salt they reel with drunk
delight
and in the
tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like
gods.
Then the great
bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep of the sea
as mountain pressing on
mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red
ocean of whale blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip,
and
comes to
rest
in the clasp
and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale’s fathomless
body.
And over the bridge of the whale’s strong phallus,
linking the
wonder
of whales
the
burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
forth,
keep passing
archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in
mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of
the sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old
hierarchies.
And
enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale
—
tender young
and
dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the
waters
of the
beginning and the end.
And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a
ring
when danger
threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great
fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of
love,
and all this
happiness in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without
words:
and Aphrodite
is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!
and Venus among the fishes
skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with
love and the sea
she
is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the
males
and dense with
happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.