They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains


the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.





All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge


on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.


The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers


there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of


   the sea!





And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages


on the depths of the seven seas, 


and through the salt they reel with drunk delight


and in the tropics tremble they with love


and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.


Then the great bull lies up against his bride


in the blue deep bed of the sea,


as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:


and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood


the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and


   comes to rest


in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's


   fathomless body.





And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the


   wonder of whales


the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and


   forth,


keep passing, archangels of bliss


from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim


that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the


   sea


great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.





And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-


   tender young


and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of


   the beginning and the end.





And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring


when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood


and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat


encircling their huddled monsters of love.


And all this happens in the sea, in the salt


where God is also love, but without words:


and Aphrodite is the wife of whales


most happy, happy she!





and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin


she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea


she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males


and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

 edited by V. De Sola Pinto & F. W. Roberts. Copyright © 1964, 1971 by Angela Ravagli and C. M. Weekly, Executors of the Estate of Frieda Lawrence Ravagli. Used by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Books USA Inc.