Poetry written by John Bennett
for The Struck Leviathan: Poems on Moby Dick
(1970: University of Missouri Press, Columbia, MO)
Fedallah: Exultant, After the First Sighting
Something deathly this way comes,
hidden by the shadowed wave.
Neither shark nor whale is He:
neither lance nor sail can save.
Ahriman in His Whale Shape
comes to taste the sacrifice.
I must serve Him as He wills:
dooms of fire or of ice,
dooms of blood along the blade,
dooms of melding with the sea!
Ahriman the Dark God comes:
none so fierce and strong as He!
Let the foolish Christians learn,
and those other infidels,
that they never dared to dream
of true heavens or true hells;
No! nor learned the Cycle which
hurls Good beneath the Other Good
and endlessly resolves Itself
in sea and desert, plain and wood!
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