I came before the water-
Colourists came to get the
Good of the Cape light that scours
Sand grit to sided crystal
And buffs and sleeks the blunt hulls
Of the three fishing smacks beached
On the bank of the river’s
Backtracking tail. I’d come for
Free fish-bait: the blue mussels
Clumped like bulbs at the grass-root
Margin of the tidal pools.
Dawn tide stood dead low. I smelt
Mud stench, shell guts, gulls’ leavings;
Heard a queer crusty scrabble
Cease, and I neared the silenced
Edge of a cratered pool-bed.
The mussels hung dull blue and
Conspicuous, yet it seemed
A sly world’s hinges had swung
Shut against me. All held still.
Though I counted scant seconds,
Enough ages lapsed to win
Confidence of safe-conduct
In the wary otherworld
Eyeing me. Grass put forth claws;
Small mud knobs, nudged from under,
Displaced their domes as tiny
Knights might doff their casques. The crabs
Inched from their pygmy burrows
And from the trench-dug mud, all
Camouflaged in mottled mail
Of browns and greens. Each wore one
Claw swollen to a shield large
As itself—no fiddler’s arm
Grown Gargantuan by trade,
But grown grimly, and grimly
Borne, for a use beyond my
Guessing of it. Sibilant
Mass-motived hordes, they sidled
Out in a converging stream
Toward the pool-mouth, perhaps to
Meet the thin and sluggish thread
Of sea retracing its tide-
Way up the river-basin.
Or to avoid me. They moved
Obliquely with a dry-wet
Sound, with a glittery wisp
And trickle. Could they feel mud
Pleasurable under claws
As I could between bare toes?
That question ended it—I
Stood shut out, for once, for all,
Puzzling the passage of their
Absolutely alien
Order as I might puzzle
At the clear tail of Halley’s
Comet coolly giving my
Orbit the go-by, made known
By a family name it
Knew nothing of. So the crabs
Went about their business, which
Wasn’t fiddling, and I filled
A big handkerchief with blue
Mussels. From what the crabs saw,
If they could see, I was one
Two-legged mussel-picker.
High on the air thatching
Of the dense grasses I found
The husk of a fiddler-crab,
Intact, strangely strayed above
His world of mud—green colour
And innards bleached and blown off
Somewhere by much sun and wind;
There was no telling if he’d
Died recluse or suicide
Or headstrong Columbus crab.
The crab-face, etched and set there,
Grimaced as skulls grimace: it
Had an Oriental look,
A samurai death mask done
On a tiger tooth, less for
Art’s sake than God’s. Far from sea—
Where red-freckled crab-backs, claws
And whole crabs, dead, their soggy
Bellies pallid and upturned,
Perform their shambling waltzes
On the waves’ dissolving turn
And return, losing themselves
Bit by bit to their friendly
Element—this relic saved
Face, to face the bald-faced sun.