I was once invited by somebody in Canada,
in Toronto, to contribute to the world anthology on whales.
And Czechoslovakia is a land-locked country,
so we have a total shortage of whales,
except one whale skeleton, which is
in the National Museum, which I have entirely
forgotten we have it.
And, so, I speculated, how could I personally comment on whales?
And, finally, I did something which
is sort of complicated poem mixing
the whales with some other beings
and mixing the harpooning of whales
with catching other human beings and somehow
contributed successfully to the whale anthology.
And I hoped, because of all the funds raised by the whaling
anthology went to the protection of the whales,
so I hope I saved about 0.25% of a whale for Czechoslovakia.
"Whaling."
"There is a shortage of whales in some cities,
and, yet, the whaling fleet cruises the streets--
a huge fleet in such a small town--
or at least a harpoon creeps from one sidewalk
to the other and searches and finds.
The house is pierced and in minute jerks,
a weird creature quivers.
Minute blood soaks into the wall.
And that is the Old Testament plot--
the elementary drama, the essential event
to be pierced and dragged away between textbooks and copy
books, between algae and Hollywood, between mummy's cups
and pictures, between seaweed and cat's paws,
between slippers and the webs in the corner,
between morning star and evening star,
to be BP or Standard Direct, to glorify the gods of piercing
and dragging, to be pierced and dragged
to eternity in the stifling inner bellowing of blood
wanting to remain and with convulsing claws clutching
the water drop on the tap, reflections in the window pane,
the first baby hairs and fins.
But there is nothing but waves, waves, waves
and the undoing of the nameless other shore with nothing
good or bad just the allocation of bones,
the scraping of plaster under which come to light, still
older and older medieval frescoes,
the sloughing of skins under which
stands out the sliminess of the fetus just conceived.
And the maledictory unison of pipes is heard--
the music of whalers, the fugue towering
over the place like an obelisk of the last breath
behind the curtains.
Nobody ever wrote Antigone of Whales, Electra of whales,
a Hamlet of Whales, Goddard of Whales, not even
Snow White of Whales, or One Flew Over the Whales Nest.
Although the whale as such is sort of a metaphor,
metaphors die out in a situation which is a metaphor.
And whales die out in a situation
which is a killer whale."
Actually, this poem was written more or less in English
because of, in Czech, you can't use the expression "killer
whale."
The killer whale in Czech is kosatka.
It doesn't say anything.
So when the poem was translated back from Czech back
to English, some of the translators
forgotten the killer whale.
In the English edition, the killer whale is missing.
So in the English, readership is much poorer
than you are in this case.