TORTOISES

By D. H. Lawrence

NEW YORK
THOMAS SELTZER
1921

Contents

BABY TORTOISE

     You know what it is to be born alone,     Baby tortoise!     The first day to heave your feet little by little          from the shell,     Not yet awake,     And remain lapsed on earth,     Not quite alive.     A tiny, fragile, half-animate bean.     To open your tiny beak-mouth, that looks as if          it would never open,     Like some iron door;     To lift the upper hawk-beak from the lower base     And reach your skinny little neck     And take your first bite at some dim bit of          herbage,     Alone, small insect,     Tiny bright-eye,     Slow one.     To take your first solitary bite     And move on your slow, solitary hunt.     Your bright, dark little eye,     Your eye of a dark disturbed night,     Under its slow lid, tiny baby tortoise,     So indomitable.     No one ever heard you complain.     You draw your head forward, slowly, from your          little wimple     And set forward, slow-dragging, on your four-          pinned toes,     Rowing slowly forward.     Whither away, small bird?     Rather like a baby working its limbs,     Except that you make slow, ageless progress     And a baby makes none.     The touch of sun excites you,     And the long ages, and the lingering chill     Make you pause to yawn,     Opening your impervious mouth,     Suddenly beak-shaped, and very wide, like some          suddenly gaping pincers;     Soft red tongue, and hard thin gums,     Then close the wedge of your little mountain          front,     Your face, baby tortoise.     Do you wonder at the world, as slowly you turn          your head in its wimple     And look with laconic, black eyes?     Or is sleep coming over you again,     The non-life?     You are so hard to wake.     Are you able to wonder?     Or is it just your indomitable will and pride of          the first life     Looking round     And slowly pitching itself against the inertia     Which had seemed invincible?     The vast inanimate,     And the fine brilliance of your so tiny eye.     Challenger.     Nay, tiny shell-bird,     What a huge vast inanimate it is, that you must          row against,     What an incalculable inertia.     Challenger.     Little Ulysses, fore-runner,     No bigger than my thumb-nail,     Buon viaggio.     All animate creati                        
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