The Lady speaks: Lost species

164. 5 February 2022

“Don’t mourn for my creatures, they’re not lost;

Don’t mourn for lost species so small.

Don’t mourn for the trees that grow at such cost:

They grew and they died at my call.

They grew and fell with no one to hear

To make seams of coal to burn;

Dragonflies flew and butterflies too,

The trees tramped the lands there to here.

Not a name, not a symbol to learn.

All was new and then old and then new.

Inside the dog sleeps the wolf;

Inside the cat, a tiger.

Inside the rat sleeps a man.

Only Time can open the tin and find

The old and the new and the newer;

I am not passive, nor am I kind.

Death is my only dance partner.

The tiger sleeps inside the cat,

The wolf dozes inside the dog.

It takes time and chance to arrange that,

The ecstatic slow whirlwind of strange;

The glorious march of trees and beasts;

You see a slice cut from the stormfront of change.

I see it all.”

***

Sometimes poems seem to come from somewhere else.