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featured poet – Carole Satyamurti (1939-2019)

How I Altered History

Wild splashing – a lizard,
fallen in the rain-water bucket,
was scrabbling at the smooth sides
 
frantic to get out,
delicate fingers not up to it,
flanks fighting for breath.
 
It’s a privilege to save a life;
some people never do.
And since life is life, indifferent
 
to worth or benefit, it was as though
I’d saved Mahatma Gandhi, Shelley,
Barthes – or any joker
 
whom attentiveness and a well-placed hand
could have turned from premature extinction.
As it was, it was a lizard with no tail
 
I tipped, ungrateful beast,
urgent for ants, twitching for a quarrel,
into the rest of its singular career.
 

Carole Satyamurti

first published in Ambit

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