Classic Poem

The mystery of it is
we do recognize it
from somewhere—
from the womb perhaps, where we,
too, floated frictionless,
weightless, wantless, without
locus. . . . Or we once really believed
in the Beatitudes—once,
like the whales, might have looked with pity
on our trackers and torturers—
succored them, wished them well.
Or we loved something once
and should have died for it.
But the whales are heathen—
or are gods themselves. And still
even the last of them half-
seem to cooperate
in their own Gotterdammerung. So
it must be that that mind ,
though the whole ocean is in it
and the keel of the planet quakes
to its bells and kettledrums, that mind
simply cannot conceive of ours.
You wonder what can—what did—
conceive ours—that only goes on
and on with the butchery
and the bleaching of bones, while,
for all we know, it is grieving for us
we hear in our hydrophones.