1. |
Whale Song
03:03
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Cerulean windows
Slow-rippling wonders
Dappling freedoms
Deepening fathoms
Icefloes in winter
Life flows in water
Shallows in summer
Shadowy swimmer
Echoes like dreamings
Anchorless driftings
Flickers and flittings
Flukes in the flowings
Gleams in the moonlight
Glamours at midnight
Planktonic breathings
Tectonic birthings
Icefloes
Life-flows
Shallows
Shadows
Flukes and
Flickers
Gleams and
Glamours
Windows
Wonders
Freedoms
Fathoms
Deepening fathoms
Dappling freedoms
Under the moon
Ultramarine
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2. |
Whale Breathing
03:49
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I have heard their ghosts on waves
Singing softly ghostly tales
We drift on the winds of this ocean dream
The breath of whales lifts our sails
The breath of the ocean is calling out, calling out…
The breath, the breath, the breath…
She shepherds him into a sheltered cove
This new born creation a mother’s love
He opens his eyes and steadily breathes
Will he make his migration to southern seas?
I pray that his blood will not roll in the waves
That a man with a trident will choose him to save
From the harpoons of lust for a whale’s force of life
Just cos they can in this blood bath on ice
The breath of the ocean is calling out, calling out…
If the whales stop breathing there will be no doubt
The winds will stop blowing when the food chain runs out
The breath of a whale is the breath of us all
If the ocean is dead than we can’t hear its call
The death of the ocean is calling out calling out
The death of the ocean, the time is now, time is now
The breath of the ocean she’s calling out, calling out…
The breath, the breath, the breath…
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3. |
Dredgers and Trawlers
03:04
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Stare into the ocean
and what will you find:
candy-shop colours
enchanting your mind,
scallops and sea-stars,
nautilus swirls,
where tender anemones
blush and unfurl?
You see only profits,
Omega 3 oil,
and dredgers and trawlers
to bring in the spoil.
When I see the ocean,
I think of a land
we’ve pillaged before
we can half understand
its glories and secrets,
its music, its tides,
inscrutable depths
where the albatross glides.
My dreams turn to nightmares:
a whole world bereft
when dredgers and trawlers
are all we have left.
Stare into the ocean –
here, take my hand –
don’t look with delusions
borne of dry land:
look with the eyes
of a seal or a whale,
dream with the gannet,
be gripped by the gale,
shearwaters swooping
out over the Sound:
your dredgers and trawlers
all scuttled and drowned.
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4. |
Rockpooling
00:50
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Realm of refracted light;
underworld of tides
and bright tentacles;
kingdom of cadmiums
and amaranths; cleft
of scuttlings and quiet
snarings; warm channel
of slops, gluts, bubbling
effusions, feathered
bloomings of stings
and gills: I sink eager
fingers in, heedless
probes of pallid flesh
groping down, blindly
to the pincering-place.
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5. |
Janthina Janthina
01:03
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You cluster in the sea-grass,
your raft a cloud of froth.
Your mantles formed the spiral;
the ocean brought you forth,
and apex-down you’re bobbing,
a bauble in the foam,
the sand your desolation,
the turquoise sea your home.
But now your shells are bleaching;
you shatter on the strand,
or break as I am walking,
too brittle for my hand,
yet shell, you are my altar –
by you I bend my knee –
a talisman of water,
a violet of the sea.
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6. |
Dolphin Call
03:29
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Webs of sunlight span the sand
and wash about her form
where the slope grows shallow
and the water’s calm and warm.
Although he’s still inside her womb,
curled into a ring,
the little dolphin’s heart will leap
to hear his mother sing,
and when by night her child is born
in some secret place,
he knows her voice already
before he sees her face.
All the family gather round:
sisters, aunts and daughters,
while her baby learns to breathe
with blowhole out of water.
At first, his swim is wobbly,
but soon, he likes to clown,
bounce around from wave to wave,
or chase fish upside-down.
When a shark comes prowling,
the whole pod interposes,
and now it’s driven far away
they prod him with their noses.
They teach the little one to fish,
and how to surf the swell,
and sometimes play with bubbles
above the sand and shell.
Sometimes, when the world’s too big,
her touch is loving silk.
Soon he arches long and lithe,
nurtured by her milk,
so when he’s just as big as them,
although the wind may squall,
his mother knows he’s ever near;
she only has to call.
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7. |
Taiji
02:24
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They tried to hide it from the world
with barbed wire and lies:
a cove of horrors slick with death
where all compassion dies,
where dolphins herded from the wild
are meshed by nets of hate,
imprisoned overnight, and each
knows all too well his fate:
to writhe and skitter, drown in blood,
and watch, as he is dying,
his mother and his children too
impaled on spears and sighing.
“A dolphin’s nothing special,” say
the torturers who gloat
and hook the murdered carcasses
and drag them to the boat,
while other dolphins wait and mourn
too stricken to be fleeing,
and I can only feel ashamed
to be a human being.
They tried to hide it from the world,
but now, the world must face
this blister on humanity
or cower in disgrace,
and we must end the slaughter now.
When any dolphin dies,
the human race has killed something
more noble and more wise.
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8. |
The Swim
03:23
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The ice and sea are tinted rose.
The orca arcs; her spout is steam
in open pools between the floes
where mirrored waters glint and gleam.
Her fin stands upright like a sail;
her eye blinks near a patch of white.
She weathers any ocean gale;
she tilts her pale chin to the light,
and where the ice, afloat like snow
slides from her sleek and curving form,
she slaps her flukes, and turns to go
and sets her course for waters warm.
High rocks and penguins standing tall;
she leaves the Falklands in her trail.
The pod swim closely through the squall –
the loving family of the whale –
till palm trees fledge the distant shore,
and warmth is bathing her in joy,
out where the albatrosses soar
she spy-hops, bobbing like a buoy.
Five thousand miles the orca swims,
from pole to tropic and back home.
We’ve no knowledge of her whims
or what compels her so to roam.
So would you steal her from her kin,
conspire to cage her in a pool?
You watch her sigh, her drooping fin,
and have no notion this is cruel?
The tie that binds her is the sea;
above, the sky – beneath, the sand.
She swims the trade-winds of the free;
her only boundary is the land.
The ice and sea are tinted rose.
The orca arcs; her spout is steam
in open pools between the floes
where mirrored waters glint and gleam.
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9. |
The Inheritor
01:26
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My mother left home when I was but ten
Forsaking forever the discourse of men;
For the call of the sea she turned tail to the land,
And left me to weep in my web-fingered hands.
Where the white horses surge, my father looked out,
And into the wind, in vain did he shout,
Though nothing returned but the swell of the sea
And the sound of the seagulls a-calling for me.
By night and by day I have wandered the strand,
My face turned to seaward, my back turned to land,
Her song on my lips and her blood in my heart,
And I feel the sweet urging that bade her depart.
So naked I’ll slip out, far into the sea,
And I’ll touch not the land until death sets me free;
I’ll look back on my father, the cliffs and the town
And I’ll seek my dear mother once more ‘ere I drown.
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10. |
Selkie Song
03:47
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Velvet and lithe, she spies a ship’s light
A sailor is yearning to make her his wife
She dives down and hides beneath swelling tides
For should he entrap her on his fisher’s line
He’ll drag her ashore upon the dry sand
And make her a home on a crag of dry land
Stripped of her kin, torn from her skin
She’ll fret and she’ll cry, look outward and sigh
And dream of her freedom in ocean’s sublime
Her beauty’s a curse, they all want her purse
Of riches that reach way day down deep in the earth
The ocean’s her home, the seal is her man
The whale her scholar, the dolphin her friend
Selkie Song. Selkie Song.
So leave her to be, under the sea
The Selkie was born here to swim wild and free
She moves with the tides, she’s nobody’s bride
A man of the land cannot offer his hand
For he has nothing she ever needs
Her hair floating round, she dare make no sound
For if she should sing it might turn him around
His ship and its crew sail into the moon
She lets out a sigh; she is free one more night
To weave and to wade in the blues and the jades of the sea
Selkie Song. Selkie Song.
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11. |
Whale Bubbles
03:07
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Down to the sand, the dolphins will swim,
blowing out bubble-rings, all on a whim,
they bite them and snip them, tweak with their noses,
watching them rise in quizzical poses,
and one swims straight through, then bobs like a buoy,
laughing because he has made his own toy.
He flits and he skims and he threshes his tail:
a bubble of joy from the lungs of a whale.
Just off a harbour a-shimmer with fish,
the humpbacks’ great flukes will flurry and swish,
herding and swirling the shoal into spinning.
One whale swims under, her powerful squealing
driving them upwards; another one weaves
a fine web of bubbles which glisters and wreathes.
They lurch in and swallow, each threshing her tail:
bubbles of cleverness blown by a whale.
Far out to windward, the humpbacks draw in
near to the lady-friend each hopes to win,
they’re rolling and tumbling, all full of bluster
summoning all of the brawn they can muster,
yet still getting nowhere for all of their troubles:
wrapped in a curtain of amorous bubbles,
she’s found him already, and threshes her tail:
bubbles of love from the lungs of a whale.
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12. |
Bremer Canyon
01:59
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They rise to the surface, or we would not know
that something is burgeoning, fathoms below:
sperm whales and orcas, the lunging great white.
They arch and they plunge, as into the night,
wrestling with wide-eyed and tentacled foes,
deep in the darkness, where rich water flows:
a canyon of mystery, place of rebirth,
where whale-breath and plankton replenish the Earth,
and albatross, petrels and shearwaters soar,
for surface and sky and deep ocean floor
are interconnected – and yet, here they come,
and all they can see is the bountiful sum
destroying this place might put in the bank.
“You fear for the fish? They’ll be fine in a tank.
We’ve no time for orcas; we’re here for the spoil.
A sperm-whale’s just blubber – now, give us the oil.”
Will you stand by and let them plant rigs in the sea,
drilling and spilling where humpbacks swim free,
polluting the water with oil slicks and noise:
a vicious invader who rapes and destroys,
or will you rise up when they come to “explore”
and call it an act of unjustified war,
and shout ‘til it penetrates heavens above,
“You shall not destroy all this beauty we love:
slink back to your office and leave to the whales
the joy of the swell and the brisk ocean gales.
Return to the city; it’s where you belong -
and leave the wild sea to the whale and his song”?
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13. |
Pilot Whales
02:49
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Ripple-dapples on their skins,
the whales sing to each other,
all the daughters and the sons
milling round their mother.
They roll and rest and loaf around
and whistle in fair weather;
the depths reflect the deep blue sound
of echoes underwater.
They stretch out in a chorus line
and swim towards the bay;
they herd the fish, and in they lunge
snapping up their prey –
or in a sprint, they chase the squid,
their backs in graceful arches,
revelling in stealth and speed
where sunlight barely reaches.
And now the surface seethes and churns
with fins of joyful whales,
pulsing sounds and falling tones
and shocks of slapping tails.
They nudge each other and cajole,
and each one loves his neighbour;
around the ancient mother whale
the younger ones seek harbour.
Yet every year the grind is here
beneath the leaden skies;
the killers never seem to hear,
the shrills and plaintive cries.
The water is a sluice of gore,
the tide a bloody slop,
and all of nature must implore
and scream for this to stop:
the time must come when whales swim
by fjords without fearing,
and only tones of harmony
will float within their hearing.
With ripple-dapples on their skins,
the whales sing to each other,
all the daughters and the sons
milling round their mother.
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14. |
Sunset at Cheynes
01:20
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I comb the beach for relics of a grisly trade:
the remains of whales, bone worn to the trabecular,
ocean-rounded, like petrified sponge.
Humpbacks were hauled in here, and sperm whales
from beyond the continental shelf: murdered,
factoried, flensed and rendered.
Here the sea would churn with blood, the strand
clotted with it; great steel boilers bilged out
the stench of flesh and blubber.
Now, the dry-docked whale-chaser lies
stranded, its belly exposed, the rudder
like a flailing tail, the harpoons rust-blunted,
and the spent breakers sigh their way to land.
Gulls and oystercatchers paddle the littoral
and only sun pinks sand and sea.
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15. |
Whale Chaser
02:34
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I’m master of a whaling boat, and I’ve seen seas so high
you could not tell the fore from aft, or water from the sky.
I live with what I see and do, all washed down with a dram;
an ogre and a bastard – that’s what you think I am.
You know my soul is stained with blood, the reddest thing afloat;
between the whale and this harpoon, you steer your rubber boat.
You think a Dutchman kills a Sperm the way he nets a cod,
but I have looked on dying whales and seen the eye of God.
A clean kill on a moving ship, the whale on a swell:
you’d find it easier to shoot an angel down from hell.
You’ll never do it with one blow: you’ll see him thresh and flail,
for he dies hard, I tell you true – there’s wisdom in that whale.
I’ve led you on a merry dance, but something in me changed,
and on the chaser of my heart, the rudder’s rearranged.
I’m guilty for the whales I’ve killed, and history is tough,
but in the offing, I can see, the water’s getting rough:
our piracy got out of hand; we thought we ruled the waves,
but the sea will smash the stones and wash away our graves.
No more can man and ocean fight, as in the days of sail,
and if I have to learn a thing, I’ll learn it from a whale.
So come and drink a dram with me, down at the White Star;
I’m done with old brutalities – I wear them like a scar.
That eye of God is on me now; its force is like a gale.
Forgive me – and I know you’ll need compassion like a whale.
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16. |
2048
01:40
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I lie on the beach
and look out to the reef
where the sea-dragon slinks,
every fin like a leaf,
out through the crevices,
over the brink
of rocks Corallina
has crusted in pink,
and the thought of it rends me
and blinds me with tears:
will his ocean be empty
in thirty-three years?
On the island, the sea-lion
blinks at the sky
as the wind starts to rise
and the spume splashes high;
her face is all whiskers,
her eyes wide and meek,
and fed with bright fish,
she is frolicsome, sleek,
as she slips into water,
dives, reappears,
but where will she be
in thirty-three years?
And the shark and the orca,
the pod of grey whales,
the delicate nautilus
riding the gales,
the limpets and sea-stars,
the marlins, the birds,
the luminous plankton:
nothing but words
from a world long forgotten,
a maelstrom of fears
that whirls and consumes us
in thirty-three years.
But the trident is rising,
the crook's set to save
from this bleak desolation,
this watery grave,
if you give but a moment
for searching your soul
and kill your addiction
to oil and coal
and bury your nets,
your long lines and spears
for an ocean still living
in thirty-three years.
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17. |
The Breath of the Ocean
04:02
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The breath of the ocean cavorts in the waves:
it never has wars, it never keeps slaves,
it never builds engines that gutter with smoke,
without it we founder, without it we choke.
The breath of the ocean is not of our kind –
it reaches a depth that surpasses our mind
it sighed before humans invented the sail –
the breath of the ocean: the spout of a whale.
The breath of the ocean’s hauled up on the strand
as blood fills the water and shame fills the land,
the mother lies dying alongside her child,
the sand of the Faroes is red and defiled,
and even the children wade through the flood,
innocence drowning in puddles of blood.
They call this tradition: this pillage and spoil –
my own blood is churning; the tide starts to boil.
The breath of the ocean is smothered by man:
some vile millionaire who lives in Japan,
who orders these killings and then takes his seat
to gorge his own blubber on fresh-murdered meat.
But these are our friends, say the men in their ties:
we sell them more gas – another whale dies –
They dare call this science – this orgy of death –
and all of us lose in the struggle for breath.
The breath of the ocean is stifled each day
compassionate souls turn their faces away.
We know this is murder; we shrug and we sigh
while scoundrels in government turn a blind eye.
You can’t save a whale with some law in a book,
so take up the trident, grab hold of the crook.
You won’t clear your conscience, your breath won’t be free
‘til every last whale ship sinks under the sea.
The breath of the ocean does not belong
to humans at all. It sings its own song
of depths we can’t fathom, of oceans sublime,
and we stand convicted of hideous crime:
intelligence, blessedness, flensed on the deck
of a shipful of horrors that should be a wreck
the twentieth century scuttled for good,
but still the same warnings are not understood:
The breath of the ocean’s like sea and like sky:
your own lungs must breathe it; without it, you die.
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Simone Keane Perth, Australia
Award winning singer songwriter based on the south coast of WA. Influenced by Celtic and British folk roots with shades of country blues folk Americana. Timeless, classic mystique. Original sound. Dual WAM Song of the Year winner after five nominations. ... more
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