For Dominic - Ghost Road Berlin

Dominic Rivron set a challenge, here: http://dominicrivron.blogspot.com/2010/01/challenge.html
about listening to piece of music and then writing about what we heard and where it took us. Now, my computer's dying at the moment (got to get this up quick before it shuts down on me), so I had to listen on the laptop, which was possibly a little faint, but what I heard was ... well, Moby Dick. That's straight where the music took me. And of course, once you're there, you can't get back, can you? I only listened once, knowing then what the poem was going to be about, and should have sat down to "create" last night but I was determined to watch two television programmes (very rarely get to watch T.V. and iPlayer a no-no at the moment with the parlous state of the computer), one of which I regretted wasting an hour on (Bible-lite) and one of which I rather enjoyed.

So I started the poem late, again astonished by the paucity of my imagination when I hear a piece of music with no words (remember the Threnody? - I had whales in that too), but still, here we go. Before the computer shuts down again. See you all later via laptop.

For Dominic, on Ghost Road Berlin.

For Ishmael and Elijah and Those Who See

White winds, white waves, white seas,

In the Chapel at New Bedford
A sole bell tolls for thee.

Wild winds, wild waves, wild seas,

In the Chapel at New Bedford
A sole bell tolls for thee.

Whale winds, whale waves, whale seas,

In the Chapel at New Bedford
A sole bell tolls for thee.

And if it tolls for thee, Ahab,
What then? You sailed to flense;
To flense desire for death in life,
You sailed to flense revenge.

You sold all souls save one, lost God,
Yet what was soul to thee?
You sought it in the great white whale,
Yet found that he was thee.

In the chapels of Nantucket
On the edge of the bountiful seas
Bells toll for lost souls
Their bodies, sea memories.

…and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.