Vox Populi
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Richard Foerster: Grindadráp, 9/12/21
Grindadráp: the traditional practice in the Faeroe Islands
of herding pilot whales and dolphins into shallow
waters where they are killed.
.
How tidy the aftermath of today’s slaughter,
how precise the tally, a record: 1428
slick hulls, black as polished onyx
streaked with white, arrayed flank
to flank, heads flopped seaward
where lances severed the blubber
down through the spine. Splutter
of blood from blowholes, flukes
drumming the sand: a refutation
of the islanders’ claim, after they rode
on thunder of jet skis for hours
to herd the pod ashore, that it took less
than a second for each dolphin to die.
And oh how obscenely cinematic the rubied
slosh of the outgoing tide into the night
where I lie not far removed in my bed
hearing those seconds tick one into the next
one thousand four hundred twenty-eight times.
Copyright 2023 Richard Foerster. From With Little Light and Sometimes None at All (forthcoming from Littoral Books, 2023). First appeared in I-70 Review.
Richard Foerster is the recipient of two National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowships. His eighth collection, Boy on a Doorstep: New and Selected Poems (Tiger Bark Press, 2019) received the 2020 Poetry by the Sea Book Award. He lives in Eliot, Maine.
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No words for the impact of this poem😭
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Me too, Lisa.
>
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And once again my comment disappears. I remember the words horrified, maybe saddened. An expression of ignorance of islander needs. And inability to get past horrified, nauseated, saddened.
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Yes, horrified, nauseated and saddened.
>
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Thank you, Michael, for featuring my poem.
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Heartbreakingly beautiful, Richard.
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Well-said, Sean. My feeling exactly.
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Speechless. All I can do is compliment the power of a poetry in conveying something I wish I’d never known happened on the face of the earth.
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