As a compass suspended between two diamonds
swims in mid-air
so hangs in darkness of phosphorescent womb
Man, the fish.
The umbilical cord secures him,
astronaut of mute obscurity.
The umbilical cord nurtures him
in the gloomy yawn of waters, a springy mattress …
The reality of cradling waters
glimmers like a glow-worm in the brain gigantic,
in the body shrivelled like a dried pod.
The brain is light:
the body a halo
and beyond the earthquake deadening waters.
And a mind is born into the wide universe
from the capsule,
from eggshell to eggshell,
from shell to shell in an endless sequence
on a ladder of knowledge.