page 39 of John Bennett's
The Struck Leviathan: Poems on Moby Dick
(1970, Univ. of Missouri Press, Columbia, MO)
Ahab: His Vision of the Kraken
Where green-skulled whalesmen lie, where no tides run,
deep down in that unsculptured gloom,
the great sea squid gropes blindly unaware
of lean Egyptians drowned in spicy rock
or Capricorn knocked hornless in the East,
a blare of goatcry shaking constellations.
Deep down and dark where mudbones gird the world,
by arm and sucking arm and sucking arm,
a polyp blob creeps through the heavy depths
where Satan, homeless, might establish home.
Ahab: Near the Mainmast, Sunrise
Into the madman horror of the sun
how many men crawl forth reluctant now
from the grey swamps of sleep and dress themselves
in clothes that stink with mortal yesterdays?
Cursed endless batter ! batter! wind and wave!
bows crashing down, green water surging up,
and the long, whining dip of mast and spar!
Who truly listens on this ship? Who hears?
Across the fronts of heaven, silence grows
between the muted thunder of old suns
like some enormous cancer;
here, the sea
roars out its manic scansion, pauses, beats,
lifts to crescendo scream, and then drops down
through seething voids that drain my outraged heart
of its warm rhythms.
Soon! Soon! Oh! Soon!
that blunt-faced phantom from the shrouded depths,
that damned razeeing bastard devil brute
whose rending jaw cut coldly at my quick
will rise to meet me on the upper seas!
In what last tide or precinct of my course
will he breach forth to learn that I can kill?
No matter where he hides, no matter where!
I'll chase him out across the compass rose,
through every strait and passage of the sea!
I'll chase him round the Maelstrom's triple lip
and round the brimming flames of Hell itself
until my lance drives down through his heart's root!
Come, Moby Dick! My compliments to ye!
My compliments, my very best to ye!
I bear a gift of tempered steel whose edge,
baptized with blood almost as wild as yours,
will force ye to attend me when we meet
and grave sweet lessons on your sullen heart!
Come, Moby Dick! Come, Moby Dick! Come! Come!
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