Let others pray for the passenger pigeon
the dodo, the whooping crane, the eskimo:
everyone must specialize
I will confine myself to a meditation
upon the giant tortoises
withering finally on a remote island.
I concentrate in subway stations,
in parks, I can't quite see them,
they move to the peripheries of my eyes
but on the last day they will be there;
already the event
like a wave traveling shapes vision:
on the road where I stand they will materialize,
plodding past me in a straggling line
awkward without water
their small heads pondering
from side to side, their useless armour
sadder than tanks and history,
in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralyzed,
lumbering up the steps, under the archways
toward the square glass altars
where the brittle gods are kept,
the relics of what we have destroyed,
our holy and obsolete symbols.
Margaret Atwood
I'm busy preparing paper for a series of new paintings that will be part of an ArtScience exhibition here in Dunedin early next month. The title of the show is BLEND. There's no way I can't not make work in response to the environmental calamity in the Gulf. I can't get the manatees, seabirds, foraminifera, turtles. . . out of my head. The words 'oil and water do not mix, oil and water do not mix' have been pounding in my chest like a storm; a chant, a plea, a protest. . .
Margaret Atwood's website is (as you'd imagine) a roomy place that, amongst its many treasures, offers generous resources for writers (ref. Negotiating with the Dead: A writer on writing). She has also included 'links of interest', photographs, media clips, podcasts of interviews, reviews, readings. . .
Remarkably, she wrote ELEGY FOR THE GIANT TORTOISES in 1968.
Click here for more Tuesday poems.
Wow.
ReplyDeletePlease, not a "last day," not yet.
ReplyDeleteA very prescient poem indeed and marvelously wrought - what a wordsmith she is.
ReplyDeleteBTW Claire I couldn't reach your site from the Tuesday Poem site ... had to go via my own sidebar link ... maybe there's something wrong with that TP link? (Or it could be my connection playing up ... ) Thought I'd let you know anyway in case. :)
It must've been my server playing up, because the link works fine now! Sorry ...
ReplyDeleteI can't get past the title of this poem it devastates me. Did you ever read the Maxine Kumin poem where she rides the manatee and scrapes barnacles off the manatee's skin with a clam shell? I will try to find it for you today. Please check out the Francesca Woodman photo on my blog today. You may already know it but it made me think of you and this poem this morning.
ReplyDeletelove,
Rebecca
Dear Rebecca
ReplyDeleteMargaret Atwood's title breaks my heart, too. Everything about the Gulf does.
I don't know Maxine Kumin's manatee poem, no - I'd love to read it if you have it near at hand, thanks. (I've tried Google, but only get as far as titles... one or two poems, but not that one. She's inspiring, isn't she.)
I checked out your Francesca Woodman photograph - wow. And oh! Think of all the questions that giant tortoise could/would ask, the mysteries it would disclose. If only we understood 'tortoise.' Mind you, we don't have to speak - all that's required of us is that we listen?
I hope your tender foot is on the mend. Ouch. That sounded sore but kind of daring, too. It's the sort of thing that might just as easily happen to yours truly over here!
Love
Claire
Let's hope not, dear Mim. Let's hope not.
ReplyDeleteI often find myself turning thoughts towards you and your treasured South Beach. I do hope that stretch of coast is not an affected area?
Hi Kay & Mary - Margaret Atwood is remarkable, isn't she? And very prescient indeed - not just in this poem, but others. Such notions make us think, don't they. . .
ReplyDeleteHeavens, it's already Tuesday morning and I'm only just starting to read last week's poems... one day, life has to - will - slow down!
L, C
Maxine Kumin
ReplyDeleteThoughts on Saving the Manatee
Weighed down by is dense bones
the manatee swims so slowly
that algae have time to
colonize on its spine.
I know a woman who rode
one down the river gently
scraping with a clamshell
letting drift free a bushel
basket of diatoms and kelp.
At one time you could order
manatee steak in any
restaurant in Florida.
It was said to taste like veal.
My friend reported that hers
bubbled and squealed its pleasure
beneath her making it well
worth risking a five-hundred-
dollar fine for molesting
this cow-size endangered aquatic
mammal whose name derives from
the Carib word for breast.
And from the overlook
at Blue Spring,
pendulous
disembodied breasts
are what I see dappling
the play of sunlight on
the lagoon. The swim up here
from the St. Johns River
—mostly cows and their calves—
to disport in the temperate water
and stay to choke on
our discards. They swallow
snarls of fishing line or
the plastic ribbons that tie
beer cans together.
Along with acorns sucked
from the river bottom
they also ingest large numbers
of metal pop tops that razor
their insides. Grazing
on water hyacinths, they’re
sideswiped by boat propellers.
Many have bled with bright scars
they come to be known by
and yet, many deaths
are mysterious, in not willful.
Worldwide less than five
thousand manatees remain.
For a small sum you can adopt one
through the Audubons.
Already named Boomer or Jojo
tricked out with a radio collar
it will ascend tranquilized
to be weighted and measured on schedule
but experts agree that no matter
how tenderly tamed by philanthropy
survival is chancy.
Consider my plan.
It’s quick and humane:
Let’s revert to the Catch of the Day
and serve up the last few as steak marinara.
Let’s stop pretending we need them
more than they need us.
From Nurture
Thank you for transcribing Maxine Kumin's poem, Rebecca.
ReplyDeleteSuch piercing lines, esp. these
'. . . Weighed down by its dense bones
the manatee swims so slowly
that algae have time to
colonize on its spine.
and
. . . Many have bled with bright scars
they come to be known by . . . '
I wonder what sound manatees make --- whether it's anything like that of whales or dolphins? I imagine it to be a kind of keening.
Four years ago, I adopted a manatee named Lily for my young niece in the UK. She, Tess, thinks of manatees as 'living, dreaming rocks.'
Thank you again for this - love the title of the collection - 'Nurture.'