A Fable
And Great Worm first lay stretched
upon
What land the sun does dry.
Like arrow to a target drawn
He converses with Sky:
“A bitter home, this salty sea
That long you made me lie.
A chilly bed, a shade-less tree,
A place for souls to die.
But now this crop of stony
ground,
I chanced to nearby spy,
Becomes my world, my newly-found,
And where my scales can dry.
Your silence I know, it’s long
we’ve spoke;
We left not best of friends.
But now you call, and me
awoke.
It’s time to made amends.
The seas recede—as much your hand
as by proud Sun and Moon.
Now all my world becomes sweet
land.
The time to rule is soon.
You sit high in cloudy splendour,
Or else in haughty blue.
You fear none, need no defender,
To guard your standards true.
So why is it you’ve called
me back
From wet and salty grave?
Why place me on this muddy track,
And grant what I most crave:
A place to crawl and shed my
skin,
And for my wings to dry.
A place where mortals freely sin,
Where mothers’ milk runs dry.
Lands grow peopled beyond this
isle
you deigned I should visit.
I’m like the hangman at the trial
Waiting to have at it.
I see their towers and their
towns;
I see their cities grow.
I see their kings with golden
crowns,
And all they’ve yet to know.
They’re like exiles scrambling
aboard
the last ship left at quay.
And armed with book or armed with
sword
They’d keep me well away.”
...
And thus begins another round
As land warms under sun,
As tides shape countries,
newly-found,
As mortals have their run.
Then in the blinking of an eye
The seas begin to chill
As Great Worm groans and looks to
Sky,
And quickly takes his fill.
THIS IS AN ODD DUCK OF A POEM. A fable with a giant worm that seems to be trolling around the all-you-can-eat human buffet bar. But the contest of wills between Sky and Worm
is the story's focus, and I'm kind of glad that humans are mostly
in the background for a change. Great Worm appears to be ready to attack and devour
them, though there are barriers to his feasting (books and
swords, for example). This is the story of what happens to Worm when Sky changes his world.
He initially appears confident and challenges Sky, even complaining about how
Sky has treated him in the past. Sky is silent, however,
and Worm acknowledges this silence, and wondering if their previous encounters
have offended Sky . Worm chides Sky that the Sun and Moon also
have power in shaping the world. But Sky is the supreme
power in Worm's mind. He asks Sky why he has been awakened after so long, again without answer. Worm then describes the changes presently occurring in the world:
the receding seas, the growth of cities and human populations, and how he will reign supreme over them. But in the end, Worm knows that Sky will win, and that the world will grow inhospitable
once more. In the poem, time seems to ‘accelerate’ and the recently warmed
world, by the poem's end, seems to be entering a cooling phase. Worm groans in despair and gobbles down as many humans as he
can in the time remaining.
I am not quite sure what to make of Great Worm. He isn't an all-powerful god or anything. He seems vulnerable, in the sense he lives at the sufferance of the silent Sky. Worm asks
questions of Sky, but gets nothing
in return except the changes Sky will make upon the world. I note that half
the poem is concerned with Worm’s observations of and plans for humanity. Worm
seems to understand human strengths and weaknesses, our fears and
foibles, and we get some of that here. Worm needs humanity, and towards the poem’s
end he fearsthat he can no longer reach them, that humans have learned
how to keep him "well away.” Whether this is a new development, or a cycle that
Worm and humanity, under the great Sky, go though again and again is unclear.
Still, I feel sorry for Worm (even with
the whole eating humans for breakfast thing). He's alone and lost in a world
that is changing. The humans huddle together “like exiles” aboard
ships; they at least have each other to weather the impending crisis. Worm does the only thing he knows how to do and takes his fill (presumably of those tasty humans nearby). Of course the knowledge that we are all ‘worm food’ is implied.
I feel the poem has a nervous quality to
it—things are disordered, out-of-kilter. I had climate change and
environmental concerns in mind, so Worm’s ambiguous relationship with both Sky and humanity is interesting, if
disconcerting. Yeats’s line about the centre no longer holding swirls
around my brain pan a bit, and I feel at the mercy of things beyond my control, like
Worm. But if history is a Great Wheel, then that wheel
will turn right round again, someday.
Cheers, Jake.
[Hey!
Sorry. I’m in a bit of a glum mood today. But, go for a walk. Pet a pet. Hold a loved one. Call a
friend. Be human. And any worms you see, add them to your compost pile.
They will be most appreciative, as will the earth.]Cheers, Jake.
