Two Voices

                               

                                 "All this while Tashtego, Daggoo,

                                 and Queequeg had looked on with

                                 even more intense interest and surprise

                                 than the rest..."

                                                                  Herman Melville

Two voices

with no choice

converse and the reverse

becoming two who never existed:

And the one says to the other:

Which step would you like to be,

first or last?

And other says to the one:

In the beginning as in the end--

you have both.

And one says: I am Ahab.

And other says: One sees it from your tracks.

And one says: Are you mocking me as monomaniac?

And other says: You mock yourself as a prowler at sea

walking little and hopping much.

And one says: Steel then moves you naught?

And other says: Why would it interest? It will end

at the bottom of the sea with everything and everyone else.

What interest to a whale or a whale's belly either?

And one says: You speak then? You are no dumb beast

but cunning.

And other says: Only to deny.

And one says: A fiendish beast, therefore, demonic and apophatic.

And other says: What profit, Captain, of revenge—what profit?

And one says: Your prophecy is of what, then--seeing all 

at the bottom of the sea? That is not another revenge?

And other says: Sea is sea. It is a prophecy of soft rains

and flying fish, of ocean and hard deserts flooded by sky.

And one says: A cunning beast and fiendish and claiming to be Noah?

Two voices

who have no choice

converse and are silent

becoming two who never existed.

E. A. Costa 31 August, 2015 Granada, Nicaragua