“The Wellfleet Whale”

Professor John Miller and wife Emily of Maryland

The following is a reading by English Literature Professor J.H. Miller at the convocation.

On this Convocation Day, I will read to you a short narrative poem by the late Stanley Kunitz, former poet laureate of the United States. It’s called “The Wellfleet Whale.”

I will not explain the poem -- like all poetry, you have to hear it in order to feel it, and feel it in order to understand it. But some background information is enlightening. This poem had a long gestation period. Kunitz wrote:

“I knew from the beginning, in September 1966, when the whale [a 63-foot finback] foundered in Wellfleet Harbor, that it was a significant experience, and I experimented through the years with various ways of conveying what I saw and experienced. All of them were failures. During that interval, I had an opportunity on Cape Cod to study other beached whales, went out on sightseeing watches, and read whatever seemed to me even remotely pertinent, until I began to feel I was part of the civilization of the whale. Fifteen years after the event, I was able to pull it all together and write the poem.”

A journal entry that Kunitz made at the time of the incident precedes the poem. In this entry, the poet reveals his connection with the whale, the emotional tie that seems to bind the two. Kunitz put his hands on the whale’s flanks and “could feel the life inside him.” The whale opened its eye and, staring directly at Kunitz, sent a shudder of recognition between the two. Then the beached creature died, closing forever the eye that was to haunt him for many years.

As Kunitz wrote, “It’s a poem that wants to be read aloud, preferably in the open air. I guess I'm really thinking of an ancient amphitheater. I write my poems for the ear. In fact, my method of writing a poem is to say it. The pitch and tempo and tonalities of a poem are elements of its organic life. A poem is as much a voice as it is a system of verbal signs. I realize that ultimately the poet departs from the scene, and the poems that he abandons to the printed page must speak for themselves.”

I shared a copy of this poem with Archbishop Tutu just after he led the Palm Sunday service in this room. I don’t think he would mind if I were to enlarge on the concept of Ubuntu – yes, Ubuntu means “We are ourselves because of others.” 

But it also means that “we are ourselves” because of our connection not only with our fellow human beings but also with all creation: the birds of the air, the fishes of the sea, and our identity with the Great Leviathan itself, the largest mammal in the sea and our near cousin.

"The Wellfleet Whale"

You have your language too,

an eerie medley of clicks

and hoots and trills,

location-notes and love calls,

whistles and grunts. Occasionally,

it’s like furniture being smashed,

or the creaking of a mossy door,

sounds that all melt into a liquid

song with endless variations,

as if to compensate

for the vast loneliness of the sea.

Sometimes a disembodied voice

breaks in, as if from distant reefs,

and it’s as much as one can bear

to listen to its long mournful cry,

a sorrow without name, both more

and less than human. It drags

across the ear like a record

running down.

No wind. No waves. No clouds.

Only the whisper of the tide,

as it withdrew, stroking the shore,

a lazy drift of gulls overhead,

and tiny points of light

bubbling in the channel.

It was the tag-end of summer.

From the harbor’s mouth

you coasted into sight,

flashing news of your advent,

the crescent of your dorsal fin

clipping the diamonded surface.

We cheered at the sign of your greatness

when the black barrel of your head

erupted, ramming the water,

and you flowered for us

in the jet of your spouting.

All the afternoon you swam

tirelessly round the bay,

with such an easy motion,

the slightest downbeat of your tail,

an almost imperceptible

undulation of your flippers,

you seemed like something poured,

not driven; you seemed

to marry grace with power.

And when you bounded into air,

slapping your flukes,

we thrilled to look upon

pure energy incarnate

as nobility of form.

You seemed to ask of us

not sympathy, or love,

or understanding,

but awe and wonder.

That night we watched you

swimming in the moon.

Your back was molten silver.

We guessed your silent passage

by the phosphorescence in your wake.

At dawn we found you stranded on the rocks.

There came a boy and a man

and yet other men running, and two

schoolgirls in yellow halters

and a housewife bedecked

with curlers, and whole families in beach

buggies with assorted yelping dogs.

The tide was almost out.

We could walk around you,

as you heaved deeper into the shoal,

crushed by your own weight,

collapsing into yourself,

your flippers and your flukes

quivering, your blowhole

spasmodically bubbling, roaring.

In the pit of your gaping mouth

You bared your fringe work of baleen,

a thicket of horned bristles.

When the Curator of Mammals

arrived from Boston

to take samples of your blood

you were already oozing from below.

Somebody had carved his initials

in your flank. Hunters of souvenirs

had peeled off strips of your skin,

a membrane thin as paper.

You were blistered and cracked by the sun.

The gulls had been picking at you.

The sound you made was a hoarse and fitful bleating.

What drew us to the magnet of your dying?

You made a bond between us,

the keepers of the nightfall watch,

who gathered in a ring around you,

boozing in the bonfire light.

Toward dawn we shared with you

your hour of desolation,

the huge lingering passion

of your unearthly outcry,

as you swung your blind head

toward us and laboriously opened

a bloodshot, glistening eye,

in which we swam with terror and recognition.

Voyager, chief of the pelagic world,

you brought with you the myth

of another country, dimly remembered,

where flying reptiles

lumbered over the steaming marshes

and trumpeting thunder lizards

wallowed in the reeds.

While empires rose and fell on land,

your nation breasted the open main,

rocked in the consoling rhythm

of the tides. Which ancestor first plunged

head-down through zones of colored twilight

to scour the bottom of the dark?

You ranged the North Atlantic track

from Port-of-Spain to Baffin Bay,

edging between the ice-floes

through the fat of summer,

lob-tailing, breaching, sounding,

grazing in the pastures of the sea

on krill-rich orange plankton

crackling with life.

You prowled down the continental shelf,

guided by the sun and stars

and the taste of alluvial silt

on your way southward

to the warm lagoons,

the tropic of desire,

where the lovers lie belly to belly

in he rub and nuzzle of their sporting;

and you turned, like a god in exile,

out of your wide primeval element,

delivered to the mercy of time.

Master of the whale-roads,

let the white wings of the gulls

spread out their cover.

You have become like us,

disgraced and mortal. 

​​​​​​​-- Stanley Kunitz