In danger, the holothurian cuts itself in two.
It abandons one self to a hungry world
and with the other self it flees.
Wislawa Szymborska; View with a Grain of Sand: Selected Poems;
Harvest Books; 1995.
So there you have it. A holothurian (as I'm imagining everyone else but me knows) is a sea cucumber (although I rather like thinking of it as an alien from the planet Holothur) . Autotomy, a truly useful concept both psychologically and physiologically, is the casting off of a body part as a means of escape.
The above is merely the first verse of what is a profound Szymborska poem, available here in its entirety:
http://books.google.com/books?id=kA1uZhCyi5cC&pg=PA137&lpg=PA137&dq=Autotomy+Szymborska&source=web&ots=aeaZV4n4fc&sig=mvrzUcAl_NVvv-iQcEpZCXhyh6I&hl=en#PPA137,M1
1 comment:
Great post. I am only a little familiar with this poet and have a book of hers somewhere. I think I will give it another look. That comes of having too big a library I am afraid. Take care
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