Biblical Hyperbole Poem by Douglas Scotney

According to Melville's mouthpiece, Sag-Harbor the whaleman,
exegetists said
that the whale, in whose stomach Jonah refuged,
must have been dead,
or else he'd have been digested;

or supposed, that he must have stayed in its amenable mouth,
as a decent-sized prawn can't pass a right whale's throat;
and a right whale it must have been, it must be allowed,
as it is reported to have two spouts,
and a right is the only leviathan so endowed.

Exegetists then said it was a ship called 'The Whale',
or some early inflatable craft.

Despite those four exegeses, you go geographical
and say, 'Okay, so Jonah was swallowed in the Med.
and 3 days later was regurgitated in the Tigris.
Everyone knows
no Mediterranean went around the Cape of Good Hope till 1488.'

For relief,
exegetists call on belief.