WEBVTT

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I think I've changed a lot.

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My hair's turned white.

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I'm going to read
a couple of poems

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and then I'll read some stories.

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The first poem I read is
called Shooting Whales.

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When the shoals of plankton
swarmed into St Margaret's Bay

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turning the beaches pink,
we saw from our place

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on the hill the
sperm whales feeding,

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fouling the nets in their
play and breaching clean.

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So the humps of their backs
rose over the wide sea meadows.

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Day after day we waited inside
for the rotting plankton

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to disappear.

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The smell stilled even
the wind and the oxen

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looked stunned pulling hay
on the slope of our hill.

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But the plankton kept coming
in and the whales would not go.

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That's when the shooting began.

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The fisherman got in their
boats and went after the whales.

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And my father and uncle
and we children went too.

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The froth of our wake sank
fast in the wind shaken water.

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The whales surfaced close by.

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Their foreheads were huge.

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The doors of their
faces were closed.

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Before sounding, they lifted
their flukes into the air

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and brought them down hard.

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They beat the sea
into foam and the path

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that they made shone after them.

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Though I did not
see their eyes, I

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imagined they were like the eyes
of mourning, glazed with rheum,

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watching us, sweeping
along under the darkening

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sheets of salt. When
we cut our engine

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and waited for the
whales to surface again,

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the sun was setting, turning
the rock strewn barrens

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a gaudy salmon.

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A cold wind flailed at our skin.

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When finally the
sun went down and it

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seemed like the whales had gone,
my uncle, no longer afraid,

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shot aimlessly into the sky.

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Three miles out in the
rolling dark, under the moon's

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astonished eyes.

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Our engine would not start.

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And we headed home
in the dinghy.

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And my father, hunched over
the oars, brought us in.

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I watched him, rapt
in his effort, rowing

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against the tide, his blond
hair glistening with salt.

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I saw the slick spillage
of moonlight being

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blown over his
shoulders and the sea

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and spindrift suddenly silver.

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He did not speak the entire way.

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At midnight, when
I went to bed, I

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imagined the whales
moving beneath me,

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sliding over the weed
covered hills of the deep.

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They knew what I was.

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They were luring me
downward and downward

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into the murmurous
waters of sleep.

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