Ph: Life: Whale Speak Ii (Revised) Poem by Brian Johnston

Oh who would dare to speak for whales,
Yet who would not join in this fight,
Their poetry of depths unknown,
The power in their mighty tales,
Deep rumbling hymn in dark sea's night,
Excited bursts from blowholes blown,
Ecstatic breach that touches sky,
Their world proclaimed in ghostly cry?

What sounds are music to their ears,
What rhythms agitate their hearts,
What whale eyes miss with clarity,
What visions move a whale to tears,
What blue thoughts cast pall on their arts,
What God a whale's true deity,
What somber rites end natural death,
What whale fears come with end of breath?

Old neighbors fenced apart by sands,
We swim in air, the sea they roam,
With deadly risks, both fight the odds,
We're strangers still in stranger lands -
(To bruise your feet under sky's dome,
With sun's, with stars', and more false Gods) ,
(To float through life and not know thirst
Till harpoon tells you that you're cursed) .

The ‘true' saints, vegetarians,
Still kill their own in time of war,
We ‘whale watch' what we later eat,
Such great humanitarians,
Our fate to be what we abhor,
Carnivorously born discreet,
Whales too have learned words to this song,
It seems we bloody all belong!