UFRGS FIS LIT ING ESP 2017

Old Light

[1] I heard a tale that the sun god was said

to live in a whale and that’s why light seems

to come out of its eyes and why rainbows

form in the mist of the gray whale’s breath.

[5] It’s true, light comes, but it is an old light,

seeing. They look. The way they lift

themselves from the sea: they are shining,

water falling from them as they rise, exhale,

inhale and return below the surface of the

[10] water.

The gray whales themselves are an

intelligence we haven’t yet grasped, Lifecovered

with several hundred pounds of

barnacles and small-eyed. If we could see

[15] them ........ the brief timescale of the planet,

they would look like shape-shifters. If we

thought of time by something other than our

own notions, million-fold years ago, before

our own knowledge of evolution, we’d see

[20] these whales …….. they walked on land.

Even now, existing within their immense

bones, there is body evidence, a hand,

human; vestigial hipbones; and remnants of

legs they no longer need. They lived ……..

[25] land when we lived in water. When we look

at them we see our own future.

And when they come up again for air

and the water falls from them back into the

seawater, it is a shine of beauty in a world of

[30] desert, dunes in the background. As their

hind legs have disappeared into them, out of

our sight, and their hands have become

hidden, the compass set into their brains,

you’d think you might be able to be one with

[35] them, as with a cousin, but it’s a cousin lost

in time. It makes us so small in the

firmament. It makes us remember something

we can’t quite name, only feel.

Looking at these whales in the shallow

[40] water, thinking of the great turn of evolution

and change on earth, we wonder if one day

we will return to the seawater, along with

these long-enduring, longest-living mammals

on Earth.

Adaptado de: HOGAN, Linda. Sightings: The Gray Whales’ Mysterious Journey. Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2002. p. 29-30.

Considere as afirmações sobre o significado da expressão shape-shifters (l. 16), no contexto em que se encontra.

I - A capacidade das baleias de serem animais que vivem no mar, mas que necessitam emergir para respirar.

II - A transformação das baleias ao longo do processo evolutivo.

III- O conhecimento do homem sobre a evolução das baleias cinzentas permite percebê-las sob nova perspectiva.

Quais estão corretas?