New Bedford.

NEW BEDFORD

   Down cobbled streets that still seem slippery
   With whale oil to deserted wharves and docks
   In this backwater port on Buzzards Bay,
   Blustery with white caps, sporadic gulls
   Screaming their hunger in the biting wind;
   Boreas blasting on your back, chilled to bone,
   You read the black edged names, stone cenotaphs
   Of local Jonahs swallowed by the waves
   In the seamen's Bethel Chapel Melville knew.
   Where yankee Ahabs carved Leviathan
   Into a blubber kingdom; round the Cape
   They carried oil that royally lit the world,
   Anointed the bent heads of popes and kings,
   Ran clocks in strict Geneva, ticking still.
   Interwoven in its map--pride and doom,
   Insignia of its thrust and valiant skill:
   A city without a shield hurls a harpoon.

--RICHARD O'CONNELL