Defense
Collapsible, selfwilled and jealousjelled,
My self once gave me screech pale sob white pain.
Thereafter, handicapped, I joined the rain
And only seldom stretched an arm that swelled
With water, like a bag. My toes were held
By webs, my face grew flat. Across a plain,
Down then a straight ravine, dragging my brain,
I came, I sank, I was at last hardshelled.
The great anemones with stately grace
Waved over my castle; tides brought shifting hulks;
And retinues of luminous eyes would pace
Before my door, then go with slow rolling bulks.
But I and other mollusks held our peace,
Hardshelled, unargumentative, obese.
Restriction
The shells that men secrete are made of words,
And even those undignified by print
Are hard and multiple. Through cracks, asquint,
We twist for prismed glimpses of the birds
That flash and wheel and cry, the hundred herds
Whose thundering hooves roar over the earth in sprint.
We ache for motion, now and then by dint
Of impulse move a nerve and think in surds.
Motion is meaning, meaning knowledge. Locked
In shells of words, the mollusks know not things,
Nor even selves, the crimped and cramped, unblocked,
Unwatched and unexpressed. The radio sings,
We think with archness of the Pleistocene,
And fuel our flaccid hearts with gasoline.
Escape
The earth immediately was torn apart.
I found a friendly piece, fell in and caught
My ear against the noise that raged. I thought:
I knew this coming, no cry now. But tart
And sharp, all fear sprang out aquiver, heart
Stammered and leapt, teeth were cold and taut.
I jumped, and terror smashed our juggernaut;
And I could move, my arm a robust upstart.
And when I rose and walked, the bits of shell
Crunched underfoot, as on a windy beach.
The clean and rainless wind blew off the swell
And stung my rounded face and tore my speech.
I felt my wounds, I watched the shrinking flood,
I dipped my separate fingers in my blood.
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