darwinday

10d

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”

—Edwin Morgan, “Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)”
published in A BOOK OF LIVES (Carcanet, 2007)

Charles Darwin was born #OnThisDay, 12 February, 1809

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781857549188/a-book-of-lives/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #EdwinMorgan #Darwin #CharlesDarwin #DarwinDay #evolution

Edwin Morgan
Darwin in the Galapagos (1835 AD)

It was a cool day for the equator
as I clambered whistling over the clinker.
Clouds had brought a shower across the shore.
Grey black scoured and pitted rocks
glistened, and so did an iguana
eyeing me lazily with its wet crest bristling.
I saw the drag-marks of a giant tortoise –
what a dogged message thrusting into the thicket!
And the air was bright with birds, well, bright and dark –
green, brown, yellow – little birds, finches
flirting their few inches, drenching the freshness
with a spray of chatter and chirm, with a charm
peculiar to these islands, these Incantadas

I met a young man in a floppy hat
who stopped and smiled; he too had charm.
“My finches,” he said, “you are watching my finches.”
We sat on an old stump, I cherish the moment.
A man both ingenuous and ingenious,
a genius indeed, enthusiastic, shy,
well no, not really shy, but modest,
that was a type I could talk to for ever.

“These finches – all different,” he said.
“They have become separate species, and why is that?
They had some ancestor in Ecuador
but here their beaks have changed to match their food –
small seeds, big seeds, nectar, and do you know
there is one that makes a tool of cactus spines
to ferret grubs from tree-cracks? Oh
I can hardly sleep for excitement!
Nothing is immutable, life changes, we evolve.
Process is gorgeous, is it not!
Process is progress, don‘t you see!”

He taps my arm, his eyes shine. I agree.
Time breaks in great waves as we speak.
And look, a finch on the back of a tortoise
as if it had been listening
lifts its beak and begins a singing
so piercing it gives no end to that beginning.

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