The Nature of my Heart
My heart is a rare, an exotic, an endangered species
in an unknown, faraway place self-seeded.
Of its own accord flown there, or blown there,
but most likely thrown off course.
Although, just last night I encountered it quite by chance,
found it still alive, still pulsating,
as if it were a fledgling quivering,
shivering in the echo-sorrow hollows
of a dank, dark cavern.
Anyhow, I took it up, cautiously cupped it in my hands,
felt the raw, erratic rhythm it was beating.
Then I braved its glaucous eye at last,
within it spied - as if I were in camera obscura –
a world reflected, but always shifting.
I thought it rather curious, but would have left it
had it not been for the constant and inexplicable ache in my chest;
so with the glassy interest of a botanically-minded Victorian,
I set out to explore the unknown specimens of this new terrain….
At once I saw a silver-plated beach, heard sibilant waves
while below the slowly waning moon and out of the sea,
leathery mother turtles crawled inexorably,
hauling carapacious selves over heaving shelves
to bury the eggs they clutched delicately within.
Fascinated I observed this slow procession to birth,
absorbed tropical scents, the heavy heat,
the decaying jungle air
and the glint, the glint
of strong, sharp teeth eager amongst the scrub,
crocodiles poised to crunch unborn, brittle shells.
The sight made me want to cry out a shout of warning,
but then, what use would that have been?
And besides, I confess, I became distracted,
for above those reptilian brains, my eye had been transfixed
by the iridescent gossamer of a thousand wings.
I tiptoed closer expecting them, of course, to rise up, fly away.
When they didn’t, I idly fancied the butterflies strangely tamed.
Then, on closer scrutiny,
winced to find them on cactus spines viciously impaled:
a cruel crown of thorns in this hideous paradise on Earth,
where all around, my troubled eye
was perceiving abundant larger than life,
blooming great petals languidly opening out,
spreading red, satiny folds,
with no stigma attached,
and long aerial roots reaching down
to sup from giant leaves,
from sticky cups of napalm.
Everywhere I began to see an unnatural sapping of life
out of trees, birds, bees,
as if at one fell swoop all their vital organs had been removed.
In there, parrots mute to the tune of their colourfulness
dreamt only of swinging in mirrored golden cages,
and headless flowers
whispered longingly of adorning altars,
seeing their faces in polished mahogany tables.
It got so bad that I was forced to plug my ears
to agony-screams as
monkeys furnished lacklustre aphrodisiacs,
wretched trophies to Human Achievement.
Then, when I uncovered a tiny hummingbird
pierced through the breast,
I was able to bear no more,
and shut my eyes on this ghastly world….
But that is just the nature of my heart, thought I,
and, as if to justify it,
Life and Death go hand in hand;
this is how it is:
‘Survival of the Fittest’,
this is the raw thing, without the Romance.
Yet, as I awoke, I thought that if it were transplanted,
my heart just might flourish
in a much more temperate clime,
and then I wept and wept
for the innocence that once was mine.
Helen Moore
The
Bard 2003/4: