YOU know what it is to be born
alone,
Baby
tortoise!
The first day to heave your feet
little by little from the
shell,
Not yet awake,
And remain lapsed on
earth,
Not quite
alive.
A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.
To open your tiny beak-mouth, that
looks as if it would
never open,
Like some iron door;
To lift the upper hawk-beak
from the lower base
And reach your skinny little neck
And take your first bite at some dim bit of
herbage,
Alone,
small insect,
Tiny
bright-eye,
Slow
one.
To take your first solitary
bite
And move on
your slow, solitary hunt.
Your bright, dark little eye,
Your eye of a dark disturbed
night,
Under its
slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,
So indomitable.
No one ever heard you
complain.
You draw your head forward, slowly,
from your little wimple
And set forward, slow-dragging, on your
four-pinned toes,
Rowing slowly forward.
Whither away, small
bird?
Rather like a baby working its
limbs,
Except that
you make slow, ageless progress
And a baby makes none.
The touch of sun excites
you,
And the long
ages, and the lingering chill
Make you pause to yawn,
Opening your impervious
mouth,
Suddenly
beak-shaped, and very wide, like some suddenly
gaping pincers;
Soft
red tongue, and hard thin gums,
Then close the wedge of your little mountain
front,
Your face,
baby tortoise.
Do you wonder at the world, as
slowly you turn your head
in its
wimple
And look with
laconic, black eyes?
Or is sleep coming over you again,
The non-life?
You are so hard to wake.
Are you able to wonder?
Or is it just your indomitable
will and pride of the first life
Looking round
And slowly pitching itself against the
inertia
Which had
seemed invincible?
The vast inanimate,
And the fine brilliance of your
so tiny eye,
Challenger.
Nay, tiny shell-bird,
What a huge vast inanimate it
is, that you must row against,
What an incalculable
inertia.
Challenger,
Little Ulysses,
fore-runner,
No
bigger than my thumb-nail,
Buon viaggio.
All animate creation on your
shoulder,
Set forth,
little Titan, under your battle-shield.
The ponderous,
preponderate,
Inanimate universe;
And you are slowly moving, pioneer, you
alone.
How vivid your travelling seems now,
in the troubled sun —
shine.
Stoic, Ulyssean atom;
Suddenly hasty, reckless, on
high toes.
Voiceless little bird,
Resting your head half out of
your wimple
In the
slow dignity of your eternal pause.
Alone, with no sense of being alone,
And hence six times more
solitary;
Fulfilled
of the slow passion of pitching through immemorial
ages
Your little
round house in the midst of chaos.
Over the garden earth,
Small bird,
Over the edge of all
things.
Traveller,
With your tail tucked a little
on one side
Like a
gentleman in a long-skirted coat.
All life carried on your
shoulder,
Invincible
fore-runner.