Chained

Elegy For the Giant Tortoises

Let others pray for the passenger pigeon

the dodo, the whooping crane, the eskimo:

everyone must specialize

I will confine myself to a meditation

upon the giant tortoises

withering finally on a remote island

I concentrate in subway stations,

in parks, I can't quite see them,

they move to the peripheries of my eyes

but on the last day they will be there:

already the event

like a wave travelling shapes vision:

on the road where I stand they will materialize,

plodding past me in a straggling line

awkward without water

their small heads pondering

from side to side, their useless armour

sadder than tanks and history,

in their closed gaze ocean and sunlight paralysed

lumbering up the steps, under the archways

toward the square glass altars

where the brittle gods are kept,

the relics of what we have destroyed,

our holy and obsolete symbols.

Margaret Atwood