Poetry – Connecting

Extracts from the book-length poem Whale Nation by Heathcote Williams
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From space, the planet is blue.
From space, the planet is the territory
Not of humans, but of the whale.
Blue seas cover seven-tenths of the of the earth’s surface,
And are the domain of the largest brain ever created,
With a fifty-million-year-old smile.
Ancient, unknown mammals left the land
In search of food or sanctuary,
And walked into the water.
Their arms and hands changed into water-wings;
Their tails turned into boomerang-shaped tail-flukes,
Enabling them to fly, almost weightless, through the oceans;
Their hind-legs disappeared, buried deep within their flanks.
Free from land-based pressures:
Free from droughts, earthquakes, ice-ages, volcanoes, famine,
Larger brains evolved, ten times as old as man’s…
Other creatures, with a larger cerebral cortex…
…
Whale families, whale tribes,
All have different songs:
An acoustic picture-language,
Spirited pulses relayed through water
At five times the speed sounds travels through air,
Varied enough to express complex emotions,
Cultural details,
History,
News,
A sense of the unknown.
A lone Humpback may put on a solo concert lasting for days.
Within a Humpback’s half-hour song
There are a hundred million bytes.
A million changes of frequency,
And a million tonal twists…
An Odyssey, as information-packed as Homer’s,
Can be told in thirty minutes;
Fifty-million-year-old sagas of continuous whale mind:
Accounts of the forces of nature;
The minutiae of a shared consciousness;
Whale dreams;
The accumulated knowledge of the past;
Rumours of ancestors, the Archaeoceti,
With life-spans of two and three hundred years;
Memories of loss;
Memories of ideal love;
Memories of meetings…
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Chapter 8

As the light began to recede, Liam and Maggie were roaming in the gloaming of evening’s onset. Close by, a young male badger foraged for worms. Liam decided to call him Alden – meaning old friend, since he had been the very first of the clan’s cubs to overcome his natural cautiousness towards the strange human.

While perched on Liam’s shoulder, Maggie suddenly became very animated. True to the meaning of the first part of her name, Maggie began chattering insistently, as if guiding Liam in a particular direction. Gradually, a shape like a Japanese Zen gateway emerged in the failing light – two upright posts joined by a crossbeam. Maggie flew the short distance to the crossbeam and began hopping from side to side of the entrance. Liam could resist no longer. Eventually understanding her promptings, he went through the aperture.

Immediately, the strangest sensations seized his body. Every vestige of what he had been in his short life until now was stripped away as if each atom was rearranging itself. He had entered as a young human. What emerged was a badger of an equivalent age.For Maggie it was no surprise. She danced atop the gateway in delight.

Although Alden’s dim, compromised eyesight had witnessed everything that had gone on with his one-time human companion, his sense of smell told him there was a strange badger in his clan’s territory. He was initially alarmed and ready for a fray as his territorial instincts heightened and came to the fore. This signalled danger for the transformed Liam. All badgers, especially the males, can be fierce in defence of their territory, and the ensuing conflicts can lead to some serious injuries. However, something of Liam’s  human smell had survived his transition. It echoed close to the surface in Alden’s olfactory memory and subdued his instinct to attack. After all, even as a human, Liam had become a strange adjunct to the clan, and badgers are fiercely loyal to their family. Soon, Liam and he were romping together in pure badger style. It seemed the most natural thing to do. Liam was discovering and inhabiting his second nature. He wondered if any of his own kind had the potential to understand on that level.

Chapter 9

Following their romping games, the two young badgers returned to the sett.When Liam entered the domed entrance he was not prepared for what he found within. He had entered a labyrinth, which would unfold over a thousand metres. Established more than a century before, it had been a place of safety for generations of badgers to retreat underground during the day, shelter from adverse weather conditions, raise their young, sleep, socialise with other clan members and keep warm during the winter.

The main sett was made up of many different chambers. Each chamber clearly had a different function. These were interlinked by a maze of tunnels with many active entrances. Off the main sett, Liam eventually discovered subsidiary setts, where he found his friend, Boudica, and her three cubs; two females and one male. Despite her dominant position within the clan, she had chosen to nest there because it was much quieter. The cubs were, in human parlance, ‘exceedingly cute’. Straight away, Liam’s heart was captured by them as he watched them play and saw how they interacted with each other.

To each he gave a name to reflect the characteristics he saw. There was a magical mist enveloping the scene he witnessed. The names he chose to identify these visions of delight were drawn from stories which, just occasionally, had managed temporarily to bring a fleeting joy into his young life. The smallest he called Fae meaning fairy. She looked so fragile when he first saw her. Her sister seemed very concerned that their larger brother’s rough male play should not inadvertently harm little Fae, so Liam called her Willa, the protector. The male cub seemed to have a sense of independence and magic about him. Liam named him Merlin after the magician, the helper and guide to King Arthur in the Legends of the Round Table tales, which had enchanted Liam’s young imagination.

Throughout, Liam’s human appetite remained. Often at night he returned to the gateway and became a boy again. He scavenged the bins but always took no more than he might need for several days. When his hunger was satisfied, he would take the uneaten food and stash it safely, close to the sett, but not too close, in order to avoid attracting unwelcome fellow scavengers.

Whilst Maggie remained his companion, on his way back he would collect any road kills he found for her to feast on. After seven months her feathers had finally grown back. She became agitated and clearly needed to leave. In comparison to Liam, her life’s span was likely to be a short one. In line with the rest of her species, it was possible it may be as little as two and a half years in all, probably no more than four years. As much time as was hers, she needed to live it. The debts each owed the other were cancelled out. He was sad to see her fly away but glad to see her healthy and free.

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Extract from ‘Puukala and the legend of the Great White Whale by David T Reilly + Anthony Bygraves

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