The White — A Note on the Text
after Hermann Melville — Moby-Dick; or, The Whale
Ian Gibbins
At sea-rim, sky-base,
afloat somewhere between
head, bone-dense, and shoulder,
blink or flinch and occasional shrug,
thick inward draw and the effort
of gyre, draught, push, pulse, pull:
on this side, the clear, yes, invisible,
on that, the almost so,
tensed, reticulated, dispersed
into rhythmic tail-flick, bell-float,
insinuating tentacle and lure:
so try me, jimble, manta,
gar, mako, kraken;
try me, wrack, rollick, wraith,
under threat of claw, spine, barb
in gnash and gape and sweep,
the rip and tear of clot:
flensed to wind spume,
brawn paled to cloud roll,
spirit leached to the aftermath
of avalanche, blizzard, quake,
all too certain glacial collapse:
the melt and mist, relentless,
the flow, rising, rising,
and I, with no colour,
no, with all, indistinguishable
from any ocean in lull or roil,
awash over the face of earth.
Ian Gibbins is a poet, electronic musician and video artist, having been a neuroscientist for more than 30 years and Professor of Anatomy for 20 of them. His poetry covers diverse styles and media, including electronic music, video, performance, art exhibitions, and public installations, and has been widely published in-print and on-line, including three books with accompanying electronic music: Urban Biology (2012), The Microscope Project: How Things Work (2014), and Floribunda (2015) — the last two in collaboration with visual artists. Ian Gibbins is online at IanGibbins.com.au.
