(“so long and thanks for all the fish”? D. Adams)
Fair noble Queen
Let me tell you of a dream
I have a dream
Let me say where I have been
It is bigger than MLK’s
But like Kings’ anyway.
I.
For you, my Dolphin of Mekong
We in clean water do belong
You must not quit the river
We all are meant to be together.
But you know the wind and weather
Will not go on this way forever
Maybe in love when this is done
We will find salvation.
For I am blind, and deaf too
So little can I see or do
So little think I, we ask of you
You who think you’re free
II. Noble queen
My dolphin of Mekong
You knew this all along
I am blind dolphin of Ganges
Together we belong.
We need the roots
The roots of trees
For they are the sea’s
Kidneys.
Mangrove and the Banyan
Yes, we speak as friends
There were times when
The rivers kissed us fresh
We fled the salt and shrank
Came up the Amazon, Yellow
River and Yangtse
What have you done with your cities?
What have you done
To Mangrove and the Willow tree
They are your lungs and our kidneys
We are I. I am we.
You can’t deny
You see it in the tea leaves
The blind dolphins of Yangtse
Ask what has become of our cities?
We used to swim the Irrawady
Orrinoco, Okavango, Missippi, Floridas Quays
But now the prawns are toxic muddy
Why do this to we?
III.
Our finger soft, all round flesh
Press against the sides and back
For what we have we know you lack
And we lack what you possess.
Push your fingers to the wall and press
The back of your hand you know
Forms a mountains from whence fingers flow
Yangtse, Ganges, Irrawaddy, Indus, Yes
Brahmaputra and Mekong,
My dolphin we belong
For you are blind by me
And I am blind by you
And yet we both can see
What we have to do.
We did not this to you
We do not touch the child sea
Your mother earth does birth
We cannot help the prophecy
This is up to you
IV.
You cannot take more sand
More marshes and more swampland
The rivers need to breathe
Or will choke the sky, the seas.
If we cry tears, riverine that run and flow
Then it may snow
On the Himalayas. Their great tears
May still bless
The rivers of tomorrow.
V. Ex tempore, aka #DailyFrees
Oh my dolphin it has been too long
Since I swam in a clean Mekong
What is it the we have wrong
Where is it the we belong
Ah my dolphin you and me
I blind dolphin of Ganges
And you so smooth, gentle too
I done things you disapprove
But if you knew
My heart is true
My sweet Mekong
Dolphin come
And I love you and you love me
Blind Dolphin of Mekong, Yangtse
Ganges. Irrawady too,
We are all gone
What is there for us to do
We are all blind dolphins now see
What have you done with your cities?
Our friend Manatee, the propeller cuts
Burn and burn, consume the watts
Burn and burn and burn our burial grounds
We buried our dead
Millions of years ago
And you fled
Upon the lands, below
My sweetest dolphin
Oh my Queen, from your high throne
You must have seen
From the high throne you rest upon
You know here that you belong
You the River’s true power
At this hour we say to you
You fools
Foolish I am, for I am
Blind and stammer
Through the dark and murky water
I don’t know what you have done
I don’t’t know what you have done
because the sound does not return.
Propeller cuts,
I cannot even say my name
My daughter’s name
My father’s name
My Lovers name, is lost in all these whirring chains
And we cannot complain
For we have no hands!
We have no hands attached
But you have thumbs
You have thumbs and all along
You have done this with your war drums
And your smoking chimney stacks
We can feel the tang of that
And the tinge upon the surface
Uhh
You think our lives are worthless
And all the plastic
It is fun,
But it does not go
The sound does not tct ctc tct
It does not return
We cannot burn these things
in the sea
So we live in mad blind fear
Oh my love
What have we done
Who are these you send within
Who are these you send down river
Deliver poisions, make me shiver
We blind dolphin of Ganges, of Mekong
And all the seas
For we have known the Amazon
And we have known as all our cousins
Are dying here
And blind.
And oh yes we can help some how
As I would help you without my hands
Without my calloused thumbs
I know what is to be done.
The Irrawady, Okavango, Oxus too
The Congo long the Jungle through
Nile, Orinoco, Amazon
There is no Salmon in the Tay.
No Salmon in the Seinne.
They have all died away
What have you done our friends?
For we are the blind dolphin of Yangtze
We see the plastic comes for we
Plastic comes for we like devil spawn
I am not like that, no pawn
I come to thee, I rub your back
Kind, light hands and tenderly
With the soft touch of buoyancy
The buoyancy of floating seas.
I swam the waves
We were there together for days
So many days it made us weak
Now I’m weak and long to speak
So I speak to you my dolphin
So sweet, so kind, always evolving
And if I had a lobe like you
I might understand what’s true
But since I don’t, and I can’t
All I can do is chant this cant
And think of Kant and have thanks
But rather than have thanks, give.
I’d love to see
My love, my lover too
Orinoco, Blue Danube
Missippi, Hudson, Murray
I do not know,
There are so many rivers flow
Ah the Blue, the White
Nile, Ah, the Thames-Rhine, the Dnieper
We must not go to sleep there
We must awake now with all powers
Ask them how.
My dolphin
Flip the ball back, the plastic one
I dropped in your path
The plastic one that’s broke in half
Kick it back to me my sweet
And I will mend it, make complete
Just flap it out the estuaries
We will clean the seas with thee
And maybe then some currents stir
In the arctic waters here.
The Whales can circulate
Arctic waters here
We can make the war drum waters
Silent, clear.
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