Becoming Light by Erica Jong

Author:Erica Jong [Jong, Erica]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780060183165
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 1991-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Elegy for a Whale

Francis, the only pregnant white whale in captivity, died last night of internal poisoning in her tank at the New York Aquarium at Coney Island….

—The New York Times, May 26, 1974

Too big & too intelligent

to reproduce,

the ferns will outlast us,

not needing each other

with their dark spores,

& the cockroaches

with their millions of egg-cases,

& even the one-celled waltzers

dancing pseudopod to pseudopod,

but we are too big, too smart

to stick around.

Floating in Coney Island,

floating on her white belly—

while the fetus flips its flippers

in the womb

& she circles in the belly of the tank.

The last calf

beat her brains out

minutes after birth

& this one died unborn…

Fourteen months in the womb,

fourteen months to enter

the world of whaledom

through a tank in Coney Island.

Not worth it,

the calf decides,

& dies,

taking along its mother.

♦

The whales are friendly, social animals,

& produce big, brainy babies;

produce them one by one

in the deep arctic waters,

produce them painfully

through months of mating

& pregnancies that last more than a year.

They croon to their unborn calves

in poetry—whale poetry

which only a few humans

have been privileged to hear.

Melville died for the privilege

& so will I

straining my ears

all the way to Coney Island.

♦

Dear Francis, dead at ten

in your second pregnancy,

in the seventh year of captivity…

Was it weariness of the tank, the cage,

the zoo-prison of marriage?

Or was it loneliness—

the loneliness of pregnant whales?

Or was it nostalgia for the womb,

the arctic waste,

the belly of your own cold mother?

When a whale dies at sixteen hundred pounds

we must make big moans.

When a whale dies with an unborn baby

of one hundred and fifty pounds—

a small elegy is not enough;

we must weep loud enough

to be heard

all the way to Coney Island.

♦

Why am I weeping

into The New York Times

for a big beluga whale

who could never have been

my sister?

Why am I weeping for a baby whale

who died happy

in the confines of the womb?

Because when the big-brained babies

die, we are all dying;

& the ferns live on

shivering

in the warm wind.

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