Thoughts Chelonian: a poem
This is a poem about growing old, from the perspective of an ancient tortoise, and in her voice. I was thinking about Terry Pratchett's A'tuin, the giant space tortoise who carries four elephants upon his back who in their turn hold up the Discworld.
First published in Civilized Beasts, vol. 2 (Weasel Press, 2017.)
Thoughts Chelonian
by Altivo Overo (copyright 2017)
Ten hundred hundred times the wandering sun
Has darkened, vanished without trace, returned;
And though my time grows short at least I know
My life is writ in arcane symbols turned
Into th'enspiraled patterns of my shell.
O strangely graven Carapace, speak thou well.
That hasty, wastrel, upstart race called Man,
With life so short as just a single gasp,
Despoils the honest earth, the sea, the sky.
Poisons all the world as might an asp
On whom have carelessly trodden all,
So thus from whom the bitter end will fall.
We, the shell-locked tortoises, survived
Much longer, watching, keeping without fail
Upon our shells the twisting lines that speak
A long unfolding, slow, and bitter tale.
It tells an ageless story and the fate
Of all who would themselves be named as great.
The universe moves on, that writing says
And pauses not to hear a muttered spell,
Nor listens ever to a desperate cry,
Nor heeds the solemn death bell's knell.
Yet in the starlight, graven 'pon a shell,
The ancient history is told full well.
A life lived ever slowly, one lived fast,
Are both ere long just doomed to be the past.