Tortoises

<p><SPAN name="link2H_4_0005" id="link2H_4_0005"></SPAN></p> <br/> <h2> TORTOISE GALLANTRY </h2> <p>Making his advances<br/> He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,<br/> No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.<br/> <br/> Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin<br/> That work beneath her while she sprawls along<br/> In her ungainly pace,<br/> Her folds of skin that work and row<br/> Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she<br/> moves.<br/> <br/> And so he strains beneath her housey walls<br/> And catches her trouser-legs in his beak<br/> Suddenly, or her skinny limb,<br/> And strange and grimly drags at her<br/> Like a dog,<br/> Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful<br/> persistency.<br/> <br/> Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.<br/> Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation<br/> And doomed to partiality, partial being,<br/> Ache, and want of being,<br/> Want,<br/> Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add<br/> himself on to her.<br/> <br/> Born to walk alone,<br/> Forerunner,<br/> Now suddenly distracted into this mazy<br/> sidetrack,<br/> This awkward, harrowing pursuit,<br/> This grim necessity from within.<br/> <br/> Does she know<br/> As she moves eternally slowly away?<br/> Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird<br/> flying in the dark against a window,<br/> All knowledgeless?<br/> <br/> The awful concussion,<br/> And the still more awful need to persist, to follow,<br/> follow, continue,<br/> Driven, after aeons of pristine, fore-god-like<br/> singleness and oneness,<br/> At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,<br/> Driven away from himself into her tracks,<br/> Forced to crash against her.<br/> <br/> Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,<br/> Little gentleman,<br/> Sorry plight,<br/> We ought to look the other way.<br/> <br/> Save that, having come with you so far,<br/> We will go on to the end. J<br/></p> <div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />