Poetry Friday: SNAKE

SNAKE

D. H. Lawrence (1885 – 1930)

A snake came to my water-trough
On a hot, hot day, and I in pajamas for the heat,
To drink there.

In the deep, strange-scented shade of the great dark carob-tree
I came down the steps with my pitcher
And must wait, must stand and wait, for there he was at the trough before me.

He reached down from a fissure in the earth-wall in the gloom
And trailed his yellow-brown slackness soft-bellied down,
Over the edge of the stone trough

And rested his throat upon the stone bottom,
And where the water had dripped from the tap, in a small clearness,
He sipped with his straight mouth,
Softly drinking through his straight gums, into his slack long body,
Silently.

Someone was before me at my water-trough,
And I, like a second comer, waiting.
He lifted his head from his drinking, as cattle do,
And looked at me vaguely, as drinking cattle do,
And flickered his two-forked tongue from his lips, and mused a moment,
And stooped and drank a little more,
Being earth-brown, earth-golden from the burning bowels of the earth
On the day of Sicilian July, with Etna smoking.
The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

And voices in me said, If you were a man
You would take a stick and break him now, and finish him off.

But must I confess how I liked him,
How glad I was he had come like a guest in quiet to drink at my water-trough

And depart peaceful, pacified, and thankless,
Into the burning bowels of this earth?

Was it cowardice, that I dared not kill him?
Was it perversity that I longed to talk to him?
Was it humility to feel so honored?
I felt so honored.

And yet those voices:
If you were not afraid, you would kill him!

And truly I was afraid, I was most afraid,
But even so, honored still more
That he should seek my hospitality
From out the dark door of the secret earth.

He drank enough
And lifted his head, dreamily, as one who has drunken,
And flickered his tongue like a forked night on the air, so black,

Seeming to lick his lips,
And looked around like a god, unseeing, into the air,
And slowly turned his head,
And slowly, very slowly, as if in thrice a dream,
Proceeded to draw his slow length curving round
And climbed again the broken bank of my wall-face.
And as he put his head into that dreadful hole,
And as he slowly drew up, snake-easing his shoulders, and entered farther,
A sort of horror, a sort of protest against his withdrawing into that horrid black hole,
Deliberately going into the blackness, and slowly drawing himself after,
Overcame me now his back was turned.

I looked round, I put down my pitcher,
I picked up a clumsy log,
And threw it at the water-trough with a clatter.

I think it did not hit him,
But suddenly that part of him that was left behind convulsed in undignified haste,
Writhed like lightening, and was gone
Into the black hole, the earth-lipped fissure in the wall-front,
At which, in the intense still noon, I stared with fascination.

And immediately I regretted it.
I thought how paltry, how vulgar, what a mean act!
I despised myself and the voices of my accursed human education.

And I thought of the albatross,
And I wished he would come back, my snake.

For he seemed to me again like a king,
Like a king in exile, uncrowned in the underworld,
Now due to be crowned again.

And so, I missed my chance with one of the lords
Of life.
And I have something to expiate;
A pettiness.

Why I like it:
Setting. I’m of Sicilian descent and my grandfather spoke of the giant carob tree by his home. I love Sicily!

I love how Lawrence goes beyond personification with the snake. The snake is personified as a guest, a fellow drinker at the water-trough, and even an exiled king. But to top it all is the comparison to cattle. The snake is so easily externally molded by Lawrence and this so carefully balances the inner struggle.

That’s what I love most about his poem. The conflict of what one is taught and what one knows to be true in his heart. Education, humanness even, is cast aside in the knowledge that Lawrence is one with the snake. However, it doesn’t come without regret. The bittersweet act at the end (human nature taking over). And REGRET.

Think about it. This poem could have ended with the snake slinking away. It would have been a pleasant account of the interaction between man and snake with a mild inner struggle and a happy resolution. But the ending so wonderfully builds on all that came before – the physical act of throwing the log and the emotional response.

Making sense of life:
Finding beauty in something that is feared. Recognizing that actions considered to be strong may, in fact, be acts of weakness.
Also, I wish I could talk to animals. And I have been in situations similar to above and felt that sense of humility, wonder, and awe.