nationalfossilday

Diving in the warm seas around Bearsden,
cased in our superchitin scuba-gear,
we found a world so wonderfully clear
it seemed a heaven given there and then…

—Edwin Morgan, “Carboniferous”
published in CENTENARY SELECTED POEMS (Carcanet, 2020)

A time-travelling science-fiction poem for National Fossil Day

https://www.carcanet.co.uk/9781784109967/centenary-selected-poems/

#Scottish #literature #poem #poetry #Bearsden #Glasgow #EdwinMorgan #fossil #fossils #NationalFossilDay #sciencefiction #scifi #scifipoetry

Edwin Morgan
Carboniferous
For I.R.

Diving in the warm seas around Bearsden,
cased in our superchitin scuba-gear,
e found a world so wonderfully clear
it seemed a heaven given there and then.
Hardly! Et in Arcadia, said the shark,
ego. We stumbled on a nest of them.
How could bright water that hid nothing stem
our ancient shudder? They themselves were dark,
but all we saw was the unsinister
ferocious tenderness of mating shapes,
a raking love that scoured their skin to shreds.
We feared instead the force that could inter
such life and joy, in fossil clays, for apes
and men to haul into their teeming heads.

ALT

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