"Line."
A meditation on the line.
And this is a long quote from Melville
"The whale-line is only two-thirds
of an inch in thickness.
At first sight, you would not think it so strong
as it really is.
By experiment, it's one and fifty yarns will each suspend
a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds,
so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly
equal to three tons.
In length, the common sperm whale
measures something over two hundred fathoms.
Toward the stern of the boat, it is spirally coiled away
in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though,
but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely
bedded 'sheaves,' or layers of concentric spiralizations,
without any hollow but the 'heart,' or minute vertical
tube formed at the axis of the cheese.
As the least tangle or kink in the coiling
would, in running out, infallilbly
take someone's arm, leg, or entire body off,
the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub.
Some harpooners will consume almost an entire morning
in this business, carrying the line high
aloft, and then, reeving it downwards
through a block toward the tub, so as
in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles
and twists.
The line is slightly vapored with tar, which makes
it compact, glossy, and dark.
The line is loose on both ends.
If a whale was struck and drove past the length of the line,
and the line was attached to the boat,
the boat would lunge into the depths and be destroyed.
Before lowering the boat for the chase,
the upper end of the line is taken aft from the tub,
and passing around the loggerhead
there, is again carried forward the entire length of the boat,
resting crosswise upon the loom or handle of every man's oar,
so that it jogs against his wrist in rowing.
And also passing between the men,
as they ultimately sit at the opposite gunwales,
to the loaded chocks or grooves in the extreme pointed prow
of the boat, where a wooden pin or skewer
the size of a common quill, prevents it from slipping out.
Thus the whale-line folds the whole boat
in its complicated coils, twisting and writhing around
in almost every direction.
When the harpoon strikes the whale, the whale sounds.
The line speeds down with the whale
at a speed that will sever a whaler's limb caught in a loop,
or cut his skin as with the knife,
should it glance against the line.
The line is kept cursive in the tub
as ink is kept fluid in a pot.
When the line is attached to a nib
and the nib pierces its mark, the line quickens,
and it grows taut.
The line connects one to what one wants.
The whaler wants the whale.
When the line is in the whale, the whale flees.
The tar-dark line allows the whaler--
once the whale has spent all his energy--
to bring the boat to the body.
But if the whale gains furious momentum enough,
it empties to the tub of line and escapes
into fathomless depths.
By the line, we know when we are attached to what we desire.
And by the line, we know when what we desire has escaped.
The line is the most basic unit of verse.
A poem is a line winding from margin to margin,
until the poem is done.
A book is composed of dark lines.
A book pursues, in lines, the meaning
it desires to understand or convey.
A metaphoric stretch can claim the poetic line,
the same dangers as of the whale-line.
The reader and the whaler are in the same boat.
Euclid, 'The line is a breadthless length.'
Emerson, 'Every opinion reacts on him who utters it.'
It is a harpoon hurled at the whale,
unwinding as it flies, a coil of cord in the boat.
And if the harpoon is not good or not well thrown,
it will go nigh to cut the steerman in twain,
or to sink the boat.
Etymology, a linen thread.
Ahab to the carpenter, 'Dost thou spin thy shroud out
of thyself?'
The white whale is found upon, the season on the line.
The carpenter on Ahab, "he's always under the line,
fiery-hot, I tell ye."
Every book, unlike every whale hunt, ends in silence.
The line runs out, and it becomes blank.
All men live enveloped in whale-lines."