NOAH’S ARK

(On 12 January 1987, at 2230GMT, I took down an Italian news agency message in morse sent out specially to ships. The text said that Noah’s Ark was no longer to be found on Mount Ararat, and gave details. The report originated in Tokyo, and the following lines are based on it.)

Earphones fed a message to the hand,

Hurried writing came through pat:

NOAH’S ARK IS NO LONGER FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT.

Words in Italian, sparks of Aaron’s Rod

Rained across the page in morse

Like intelligence from God:

NOAH’S ARK IS NOT FOUND ON MOUNT ARARAT.

Morse flowed like splintered glass

The text unfinished, rattling on:

BUT IN ALL PROBABILITY YOU WILL FIND NOAH’S ARK

ON A HILL FIVE HUNDRED METRES HIGH

ON THE BANKS OF THE TIGRIS BETWEEN SYRIA AND TURKEY.

Rome International Radio informed all ships

Swaying the emerald Atlantic waves

Urgent news of Ararat,

And Marconi operators wrote the gen

And typed it with the morning news,

Sailors with shocked eyes and lips atremble said:

L’ARCA DI NOÈ NON SI TROVA SUL MONTE ARARAT!

Perhaps Noah’s Ark had been not lost

But one dark night dissected

And put on donkeys for a secret destination.

Hot-footed morse did not originate from God:

A Japanese expedition from an Electronics Firm

Led by YOSHIO KOU had combed

The scrub of Chaldees with a Bible and a map

Finally concluding that

NOAH’S ARK IS NO LONGER ON MOUNT ARARAT

Kids at school threw down their pens

Church and Synagogue were worried

And the Zurich bourse was flurried.

But fact and inspiration tell

How the Ark came on to Ararat because

The navigation of the Pilot was spot-on.

A dove and olive twig to guide the rudder:

And travelling all night above Lake Van

The snowy light was not one cloud of many

But glinting Araratic glaciers in the dawn.

Anchored by a terminal moraine

Noah ordered animals and humans to disperse.

God camouflaged the Ark from archaeologists

Who scour the land with lamp and map.

What YOSHIO KOU found by the Tigris

Was not an Ark but a canoe,

Though matters Biblical led him to state

NOAH’S ARK IS NO LONGER BEACHED ON ARARAT.

The story in the Bible’s better:

Of how the Ark on Day Seventeen

After the flood that God begat

Bumped against the banks of Ararat.

The Ark, in spite of YOSHIO KOU, lies under rocks

On tufic Ararat, below a Turkish post

That looks on Persia.

I saw it in a dream, and sent a message back

By telegraphic key

Feet tapping to its rhythm on the mat:

NOAH’S ARK’S STILL HIDDEN ON MOUNT ARARAT.