The Year of the Whale

The old go, one by one, like guttered flames.

This past winter

Tammag the bee-man has taken his cold blank mask

To the honeycomb under the hill,

Corston who ploughed out the moor

Unyoked and gone; and I ask,

Is Heddle lame, that in youth could dance and saunter

A way to the chastest bed?

The kirkyard is full of their names

Chiselled in stone. Only myself and Yule

In the ale-house now, speak of the great whale year.

This one and that provoked the taurine waves

With an arrogant pass,

Or probing deep through the snow-burdened hill

Resurrected his flock,

Or passed from fiddles to ditch

By way of the quart and the gill,

All night lay tranced with corn, but stirred to face

The brutal stations of bread;

While those who tended their lives

Like sacred lamps, chary of oil and wick,

Died in the fury of one careless match.

Off Scabra Head the lookout sighted a school

At the first light.

A meagre year it was, limpets and crows

And brief mottled grain.

Everything that could float

Circled the school. Ploughs

Wounded those wallowing lumps of thunder and night.

The women crouched and prayed.

Then whale by whale

Blundering on the rock with its red stain

Crammed our winter cupboards with oil and meat.