The Turtle

Beneath the cryptic cartography of the rain,
where centuries dissolve in mineral sleep,
the turtle bears a cathedral of restraint,
a calcified cosmos no cataclysm can keep.

Its carapace, an atlas of forgotten stars,
is tessellated with the weight of time;
each scute a hieroglyph of vanished empires,
each fracture, an unfinished paradigm.

It does not flee the tyranny of hours,
nor kneel before the clockwork of decay;
while empires combust into their own ashes,
it negotiates eternity in clay.

O, paradox of armour and of vulnerability,
thou paradoxical pilgrim of the loam,
within thy shell, a portable infinity -
a universe that carries its own home.

The heron watches from the reeds,
austere; the pond rehearses heaven in its glass.
The turtle moves, indifferent to fear,
as though it knows what all things must surpass.

For what is speed but panic made kinetic,
what haste but terror wearing gilded shoes?
The swift arrive at endings quite pathetic;
the slow possess the privilege to choose.

And when the sun, exhausted, abdicates,
when dusk unthreads the firmament's design,
the turtle, ancient witness to the fates,
withdraws into the architecture of its spine.

There, in the sanctuary of its silence,
where neither praise nor prophecy intrudes,
it dreams beyond the jurisdiction of violence,
beyond the hunger of the multitudes.

Perhaps the universe, in some primordial hour,
was not conceived as motion, flame, or flight,
but as a turtle contemplating power and choosing,
quite deliberately, the night.

So let the planets sprint their fevered circles;
let time devour the kingdoms it has known.
The turtle bears eternity in circles of bone and keratin,
and calls them home.

And if, at last, the final star extinguishes,
if nothing remains of memory or name,
one patient silhouette still distinguishes itself from nothingness-
and does not hurry

Sam Jalil