Baby Lyuba: Lost Worlds for Poetry Friday

Continuing to think about allusion: Here is another Lost World poem—with the provenance of imagery.

THIS +

THIS +

THIS =

*

Lost Worlds: The Extinct

Deep in the Siberian permafrost

temptation is accumulating in little crystals

floating in the air

like breath.

The mammoth is a huge temptation.

It is as if time is stopped.

The cold is too thick to let the minutes pass.

Only the temptation is moving forward

collecting,

whispering,

“Certainly there could be cells in perfect order

only frozen

waiting to wake up to the returning sun

the way snow wakes

sublimating from ice to breath.”

It is a salvation plot

Dostoevsky might not have understood.

The cautionary lamb

struggles to her arthritic knees.

Telomeres ticking.

No cold is thick enough to stop

their bleating.

- - -

I don't especially like this poem, it isn't strong and I don't think it can be made strong. It is, however, very allusive. So allusive, it becomes obscure to everyone but me. 

  

Poetry Friday is at
My Juicy Little Universe

* I had a copy of this Big Little Book in which Lassie discovers a perfectly preserved frozen mammoth, which, was, alas, destroyed in a forest fire. I don't remember if I was obsessed with mammoths before I read it, but I am now.
The second picture is of Dolly the Sheep, the famous clone, whose untimely death proved to be timely after all. There is no fooling telomeres.
Then there is Dostoevsky, who provided the yearning—and I blame him too, for the hovering veil of Christian symbology.