Oh! Oh, can you tell me what the whales dream?
Can you say what visions inform their song?
How deep, how sad do their forlorn notes seem!
What has haunted them through all the years long?
Is it the sorrowing of the wide sea
The ancient roar of all those endless deeps
Could those vast echoing sounds be the key?
Or is it death that from man slowly seeps?
Maybe they dream only of loneliness
Maybe their visions show the end of time
Or is it lost loves that their songs confess
The romances that men may only mime?
Surely it is not to me that they sing
As I watch the sea, a lonesome old thing |
Jared Schmitz, a librarian, is currently studying for his Bachelor's in English at the University of Kansas.Earlier this year, he won K.U.’s William Herbert Carruth Memorial Poetry Contest. |
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