You have seen at low tide on the rocky shore
How everything around you sparkles, or
Is made to when you think what went before.
Much of this blaze, that’s mental, seems to come
From a pool among the creviced rocks, a slum
For the archaic periwinkle. Some
Are twisting, some are sleeping there, and all
(For sun is pulse, and shade historical)
Cling in blotched spirals to the shadiest wall
– Whose cousins, shingled by the finding tide,
Purpled the cloths of kings. Place one upside-
Down in your hand. If at all satisfied,
The little creature stretches from its shell
One lucent, speckled horn by which to tell,
Touching your skin, if that is safe as well;
Then turns with much interior shifting over
Into your palm, so that its spirals cover
Whatever suddenly takes hold. You shiver,
Thinking what else is like a creature curled
In a flaky cone which inside is all pearled
With nourishment sucked out from the pulsing world.
The snail drops back to rock. What images
Coil down past the first blunt apologies
Drop back. You are left asking about this,
Touched by the crazy trustfulness of the past:
Its gentle sucking, our old nurse at last
Demented, crooned to revery at our breast.
It is ourselves shall tell her fairy-tales
Of fountains we scooped dry with bottomless pails.
Then we grow old; her lunacy prevails.
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