Sea Shepherd

Friday, December 28, 2007

New from the front ~ A poem by Paul Watson


NOTES FROM THE FRONT


On the ragged edge of the world I'll roam

And the home of the whale shall be my home

And saving seals on the remote ice and snows

The end of my voyage... who knows, who knows?



SEA SHEPHERD



The Thirty Years War

In

Thirty Verses



August 1977 - August 2007



For three decades I have fought at sea

Under Sea Shepherd's piratical flag,

And seven year before that under the Greenpeace name.

Thirty-seven years before the mast, sailing free

Under so many coloured and convenient national rags,

And so many bloody years playing this deadly game.



I emerged from the dusty African plain,

Six months of hunting cruel elephant poachers to ground,

Seeing the faces of ugly death smeared with primal mud and dust,

The smells of dying and pools of steaming blood nearly drove me insane,

The screams of elephants the most pathetic soul shattering sound,

Watching their blood flowing into the ground as living rust.



A successful appeal brought me my first ship,

I named her the Sea Shepherd to protect the children of the sea,

And took her through the Northern Atlantic rage,

Into the thick ice her strong bow did rip

To defend the baby seals to set them free,

And to make my ship a crusading stage.



In pursuit of the pirate whaler Sierra that I rammed,

Avenged the deaths of thousands of whales,

Hit her twice both hard and true,

Into her side my steel bow was slammed,

Sank her to the bottom for the whales.



Sank half the savage Spanish whaling fleet in port,

Destroyed another in the Canary Isles,

Brought down two more in Cape Town.

All whaling in the Atlantic we did abort,

Closing every criminal whaling operation in the files,

Attacking and destroying every whaler we found.



I lost and gained another ship.

Set off to land, on a remote Siberian shore,

Caught the Russians in a murderous crime,

The Soviet fleet held us in a deadly grip,

Flares were fired and guns spat fire and did roar,

Miracle of miracles we escaped that time.



Fighting for dolphins in Japan in eighty-two,

Back in the Eastern ice for seals in eighty-three,

The Canadians attacked and seized my boat,

We lost some ground but saved a few,

But we never backed down or tried to flee,

By eighty-five we were back afloat.



To the Ferocious Isles for the pilot whales,

To Iceland where half the whaling fleet we sunk,

Every sunken whaler gave me joy,

Our aggression was tipping the scales,

Reveling in converting killing ships to junk,

Planning strategies and tactics to deploy.



I took my third ship the Divine Wind to the Aleutians

Hunting down drift nets, foul curtains of destruction,

Storms and tides we weathered bold,

Looking to discover confrontational solutions,

To stop the pattern of marine ecological reduction,

Where blood is hot and the seas are cold.



We rammed two drift netters in the North Pacific,

And destroyed hundreds of miles of killing nets galore,

We rammed a Taiwanese drift netter off the Barbadian coast,

Near Cocos we found poachers gutting sharks horrific,

Chased them off with our cannon's roar,

Such victories pleased me the very most.



Sent a Norwegian whaler to the bottom of the bay,

Two year later scuttled another with elation,

Tackled the Norwegian Navy off the Norwegian shore,

With Norway to save the whales we had our say,

And cheered the sinking with celebration,

The Navy rammed us and declared war.



Depth charges, shells and intimidation,

For five hundred miles they harried us sore,

My ship the Whales Forever escaped capture,

The Norwegians screaming recriminations,

We embarrassed them to their very core,

In the eyes of the world we had lowered their stature.



Chased the Cod killers off the Grand Banks,

Charged with the crime of saving fish,

It cost the Cubans and Spanish dear.

We decimated the bottom trawling ranks,

I was taken in chains against my wish,

It was life in prison that I did fear.



I won the case and was set free,

Detained again in the Netherlands,

Held for months for extradition,

But being sent to Norway was not to be,

I was not sent to the Nordic lands,

Legally unblemished remained my condition.



The globe became our battleground,

So many assaults, so many demands, so much greed,

Fighting an enemy of our own kind,

Whose numbers continue to grow and abound,

They gobble up the Earth with billions of mouths to feed

In that equatorial sand I've had to draw a line.



The line lies in the Galapagos, the Enchanted Isles,

If we can't stop it here, we will not stop it anywhere,

A planetary view in microcosm so plain,

Illegal longlines set for miles and miles,

Endangered species becoming more rare,

So much diminishment and so much pain.



In my life I have trekked frozen rivers to save wolves from rifles,

I have stood before and blocked deadly harpoons,

I have twisted seal clubs from the grip of sadistic sealers,

My life has not been wasted on niceties and trifles,

It has been three decades of open wounds,

Searching for compassion, searching for healers.



I have found no place to lay my head to rest,

Tortured by the cold hearted eyes of humanity,

Seeking love, searching for meaning and reason,

My life has been an never-ending test

Can I separate myself from humanity's insanity?

I am in a war that recycles every season.



A war without end with no respite,

A war that has now has surpassed the first 30 years war,

Another ridiculous conflict of human inanity,

Where once the French and the British killed each other on sight,

We now inflict such violence against every species off every shore,

Killing for gluttony, greed, lust, rage, pride, sloth and vanity.



Four times I've engaged the Japanese whaling fleet,

In a world of wondrous ice mountains and floes,

In a place declared a sanctuary for the whale,

We scored at least one major defeat,

But our enemies are stubborn powerful foes,

But we cannot surrender, we must not fail.



I will refuse to live in a world without the whale.

As long as they are in this world I have hope.

And hope is all that remains after humanity opened Pandora's box.

Death and shame is the only option should we fail,

And so with this unending war I must continue to grope.

To fight to save the world from the human viral pox.



I could not do this without love of nature and of life,

I need to feel the salt wind upon my face,

And hear the song of the whale from the deep dark blue,

I have failed to find fulfillment in a human wife,

Few woman would want to be part of this uncertain chase,

Oh I know there are indeed a loving few.



But this life it eats and gnaws and torments a living rage inside,

Although my heart remains open and strong,

Knowing that happiness may be beyond my Earthly reach,

I can honour the feminine when I am blessed with love at my side,

Temporary it may be but it can't be wrong,

For good or bad, love has something to teach.



And I take that strength and channel it true,

Using it to pull me through,

Allowing me to point my bow once again towards that briny awesome blue,

To hunt and chase, pursue, and marshal my bold courageous crew,

For from their ranks I see the emergence of a rare select few

To continue the dream with tactics and strategies new.



To see them stand upon the shore and pull rifles from the hands of killers,

To witness them jump into the bay to free dolphins from certain death behind the nets,

To marvel at their trek across the ice to take the blows from a sealer's club,

To watch them hold their ground and spit in the eye of vicious serial killers,

The see them slash and rip apart drift nets, drag nets and tuna seine nets,

To rejoice when they snatch from the sealer's hand that blood stained evil club.



If there is a lasting legacy in this fight,

It must be exemplary empowerment for Earthly warriors,

To teach and hope that others will continue the battle,

Somewhere in the future we may see the light,

For we need a legion of conservation activists, teachers and lawyers,

If ever the cages we hope to do more than rattle.



I am older now but still not old,

I am weary sometimes but never tired,

I am alone most often but never lonely nor depressed,

My rage and the love that inspires it has never gotten cold,

And I see no prospects nor desire to retire,

For in truth my life has been surely blessed.



To be a warrior in this fight is the greatest of all gifts,

To spend our energies saving lives is the ultimate honour,

To teach and speak and act for the planet brings inner peace and joy,

Building a lasting legacy, seeding different myths,

Challenging the conceit of human superiority is no dishonour,

Understanding that this planet is not our little throw away toy.



I bid respect and honour upon all my crew,

To my daughter I thank for understanding my path

To the women in my life I thank for their most beloved treasures,

They gave me poetry, music, art, dance, song and the beauty of the morning dew.

Most importantly they gave me the feminine strength to control my wrath,

To channel it and despite the war to see life's most intimate pleasures.



I'm not through with this fight by a long shot,

But thirty years is thirty years,

And sometime in the next thirty years I will surely fall,

But dying quietly will not be my lot,

Nor on my knees will I expire,

From the depths of the sea I will hear the call.





And I will slide beneath the darkening waves with absolute joy and desire.

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