counters on the living back
Of the baby tortoise;
Life establishing the first eternal mathematical
tablet,
Not in stone, like the Judean Lord, or bronze, but
in life-clouded, life-rosy tortoise-shell.

The first little mathematical gentleman
Stepping, wee mite, in his loose trousers
Under all the eternal dome of mathematical law.

Fives, and tens,
Threes and fours and twelves,
All the volte face of decimals,
The whirligig of dozens and the pinnacle of seven,
Turn him on his back,
The kicking little beetle,
And there again, on his shell-tender, earth-touching
belly,
The long cleavage of division, upright of the
eternal cross.

And on either side count five,
On each side, two above, on each side, two below
The dark bar horizontal.

It goes right through him, the sprottling insect,
Through his cross-wise cloven psyche,
Through his five-fold complex-nature.

So turn him over on his toes again;
Four pin-point toes, and a problematical thumb-
piece,

Four rowing limbs, and one wedge-balancing-
head,

Four and one makes five, which is the clue to all
mathematics.

The Lord wrote it all down on the little slate
Of the baby tortoise.

Outward and visible indication of the plan within,
The complex, manifold involvedness of an
individual creature
Blotted out
On this small bird, this rudiment,
This little dome, this pediment
Of all creation,
This slow one.

TORTOISE FAMILY CONNECTIONS

On he goes, the little one,
Bud of the universe,
Pediment of life.

Setting off somewhere, apparently.
Whither away, brisk egg?

His mother deposited him on the soil as if he were
no more than droppings,
And now he scuffles tinily past her as if she were
an old rusty tin.

A mere obstacle,
He veers round the slow great mound of her.

Tortoises always foresee obstacles.

It is no use my saying to him in an emotional
voice:
"This is your Mother, she laid you when you were
an egg."

He does not even trouble to answer: "Woman,
what have I to do with thee?"
He wearily looks the other way,
And she even more wearily looks another way