A lamp
A willow tree
Two lovers in peril
A key to a lock that is also somewhere abouts
A bobbing, brown box of tea
Bits of old songs; a cat, one almost drowned, but breathing at that
And a hat一Does anybody still wear a hat?
A saucer, a cup
The first manuscript of Orwell’s “Coming Up For Air” is down there
Under the waves, by the tongue, by the stair
A candle? Too wet. A flashlight with... oh, it seems, too big a dent
And, by touch and by scent, I think a small box of matches一spent
And the mouth opens wide, and yet more pours inside.

The water’s lifting, as the walls start shifting
And things start drifting with the flow
You can tell with your hands, that these must be glands
As the glands expand and the arteries grow
Groping about inside a whale

For every last detail must be learned by braïlle
In the big, black belly of the whale

It’s a battle through the rattle of the chattels
Where a rat’ll root about inside your suit
And the gloom hides the faces of the stacked Ming vases
Whose glazes leave sharp traces when they’re trampled underfoot
One heave and groan and you’re bodily thrown
Under twenty stone of steel
And the chaps in the fetters don’t fare much better
When they’re tossed together with each turn and wheel
You can hear them bellow and wail?

If the thing should inhale, there’s a forty knot gale
That will blow through the belly of the whale

In the belly of a whale, there’s a library, which is mainly books on tape
The ones on fishing and means of escape
Appear to all be out on loan

In the trammel of the tooth enamel
Of the deep-sea mammal there are fish
If you can spot ‘em, long forgotten,
Slowly turning rotten, when they were once delicious
Trapped down here, in this dark, austere
And bleak interior
Smell the decoration with acute frustration
Now, is that cetacean a big porpoise
Or is it another bloody whale?

On a much smaller scale, fitting head to tail
In the big, black belly of the whale

In the belly of a whale, a light pours in through a hole that opens and shuts
Hitting something shiny, deep in the guts
It’s the Holy Grail… but to get the Grail, you must first enter The Lions’ Den, in The Dragon’s Lair, in The Belly of the Beast, which is a whale

An old man
Sits by the Grail in the belly of the whale
Looking pale and frail and thin
In this salty offing, all cackles and coughing
I ask: “Is there nothing not found within
The belly of this whale?”