still,
Each with the utmost apathy,
Incognizant,
Unaware,
Nothing.

As for papa,
He snaps when I offer him his offspring,
Just as he snaps when I poke a bit of stick at him,
Because he is irascible this morning, an irascible
tortoise
Being touched with love, and devoid of
fatherliness.

Father and mother,
And three little brothers,
And all rambling aimless, like little perambulating
pebbles scattered in the garden,
Not knowing each other from bits of earth or old
tins.

Except that papa and mama are old acquaintances,
of course,
But family feeling there is none, not even the
beginnings.

Fatherless, motherless, brotherless, sisterless
Little tortoise.

Row on then, small pebble,
Over the clods of the autumn, wind-chilled
sunshine,
Young gayety.

Does he look for a companion?
No, no, don't think it.
He doesn't know he is alone;
Isolation is his birthright,
This atom.

To row forward, and reach himself tall on spiny
toes,
To travel, to burrow into a little loose earth,
afraid of the night,
To crop a little substance,
To move, and to be quite sure that he is moving:
Basta!

To be a tortoise!
Think of it, in a garden of inert clods
A brisk, brindled little tortoise, all to himself--
Croesus!

In a garden of pebbles and insects
To roam, and feel the slow heart beat
Tortoise-wise, the first bell sounding
From the warm blood, in the dark-creation
morning.

Moving, and being himself,
Slow, and unquestioned,
And inordinately there, O stoic!
Wandering in the slow triumph of his own
existence,
Ringing the soundless bell of his presence in
chaos,
And biting the frail grass arrogantly,
Decidedly arrogantly.

LUI ET ELLE

She is large and matronly
And rather dirty,
A little sardonic-looking, as if domesticity had
driven her to it.

Though what she does, except lay four eggs at
random in the garden once a year
And put up with her husband,
I don't know.

She likes to eat.

She hurries up, striding reared on long uncanny
legs,
When food is going.
Oh