TORTOISE GALLANTRY
by: D.H. Lawrence (1885-1930)
- AKING his
advances
- He does not look at her, nor sniff at her,
- No, not even sniff at her, his nose is blank.
-
- Only he senses the vulnerable folds of skin
- That work beneath her while she sprawls along
- In her ungainly pace,
- Her folds of skin that work and row
- Beneath the earth-soiled hovel in which she moves.
-
- And so he strains beneath her housey walls
- And catches her trouser-legs in his beak
- Suddenly, or her skinny limb,
- And strange and grimly drags at her
- Like a dog,
- Only agelessly silent, with a reptile's awful persistency.
-
- Grim, gruesome gallantry, to which he is doomed.
- Dragged out of an eternity of silent isolation
- And doomed to partiality, partial being,
- Ache, and want of being,
- Want,
- Self-exposure, hard humiliation, need to add himself on to
her.
-
- Born to walk alone,
- Forerunner,
- Now suddenly distracted into this mazy sidetrack,
- This awkward, harrowing pursuit,
- This grim necessity from within.
-
- Does she know
- As she moves eternally slowly away?
- Or is he driven against her with a bang, like a bird flying
in the dark against a window,
- All knowledgeless?
-
- The awful concession,
- And the still more awful need to persist, to follow, follow,
continue,
- Driven, after æons of pristine, fore-god-like singleness
and oneness,
- At the end of some mysterious, red-hot iron,
- Driven away from himself into her tracks,
- Forced to crash against her.
-
- Stiff, gallant, irascible, crook-legged reptile,
- Little gentleman,
- Sorry plight,
- We ought to look the other way.
-
- Save that, having come with you so far,
- We will go on to the end.
"Tortoise Gallantry" is
reprinted from Tortoises. D.H. Lawrence. New York: Thomas
Seltzer, 1921. |
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POEMS BY D.H. LAWRENCE |
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