darwin's pistols

when he left plymouth on the beagle

darwin took with him a commission

to prove that god created the world in six days

and a collection of new pistols he purchased for 50 pounds

he was to have settled into being a clergyman,

always enjoyed the first day of partridge season,

in the fields with his guns & dogs,

and before he grew into the portrait of himself,

as the stern & sullen man covered in a shawl,

he brandished his pistols at parties, shooting out the flames

of the candelabra with blanks when called upon

he was encouraged by captain fitzroy to buy an expensive set,

(who knew the worth of good pistols at the far ends of the earth),

they were smooth, curved table-pieces,

a gentleman's carved totem,

that rested easily in his hand,

like a favourite book

he had never intended to shoot god

just curious to know how fossils of fish could be found

high in the andes

how the finches of galapagos evolved thick parrot-beaks to

crack nuts on some islands,

while others had finer beaks chiselled down to catch insects across the thin strip

of archipelago

and coming ashore at conception after the earthquake,

he stood amongst the city in ruins, the buckled streets,

feeling the insecurity of knowing that his solid earth

was a thin crust floating like an ice floe on hot lava,

and though fitzroy knew these disasters to be god's wrath

upon human wickedness

and locals spoke of an old indian woman who was a witch

revenging herself by plugging up the vents of volcanoes

darwin knew then

that if there had ever been a flood it was not from some cranky deity

he never intended to shoot himself a god,

standing on an island at the far end of the pacific

he had pointed his  pistols into the blue sky,

a wild potshot but god's too big a target to miss,

and though not fatal it made him drag a leg on cold mornings

and who believes in a god with a limp

skin trader

wallace was labelled a mere skin trader

by the royal society at first

a man who had not been to oxford

without the right connections

a man who had daring no doubt

and it was pleasing to see the working classes

interested in the higher arts

but how much confidence could you have

in a naturalist who skinned & sold birds

returning home from the amazon

his ship caught fire and sunk

from the longboat he watched

the sails catch like rice paper

heard his monkeys screeching

as they flew from spar to spar

and thought he could hear the slow

smouldering of his diaries

the jungle cries & wet nights

rising in grey syllabics

till there was only the silence

of a scorpion beneath a makeshift pillow

four years' work almost gone

except his one remaining diary

that he held in a tin box

and was enough of a naturalist

to admire the blue flash of dolphins in the lee-wake

looking to the sky for new species of sea-bird

while the crew no doubt thought him mad

finally returned to england

he came ashore at deal carrying his tine box

going to bed with swollen ankles

aru

for the buginese of celebes

the islands of aru were at the edge of the world

those who returned were holy men

who were honoured in telling their stories

of winds & pirates & wild men

birds that trailed their feathered tails across the land

and on some nights when the moon

seemed tangled in the trees

told of the sea's hollow sounds

as it tumbled endlessly off the earth

They sailed their praus

a thousand miles on prevailing winds

knowing they had to wait six months

for the monsoons to return them home

they sailed south of new guinea & north of australia

to a place of fiercesome papuans

collecting taipangs & beche de mer

birds of paradise whose say of tail 

brought gold on europe

for rich collectors with a penchant

for the remains of beauty

that could be framed on walls 

admired as if the owners had themselves

a fine fan dragging from their suited tails

evolution

evolution is essentially about extinction

those who make it or not

and instead of divine whimsy

wallace hoped as he came on a prau to aru

that somewhere on these islands

the secret would unfold

like a peacock's tail

the ark

noah built his arc 300 cubits long

a small miracle for the times

especially for a 600 year old man

and it seemed big enough

for every creature god had made

till one day men driven by the smell of spice

built better boats

they all came with tales:

columbus told of macaws,manatees & iguanas,

peccaries,hispaniola & hutias

pigafetta reported monkeys that looked like lions

only yellow and more beautiful

& then ther were armadillos, toucans

sloths & vicunas

all who had failed to make the original ark

god it seemed had been far busier

than anyone had thought

peacock's tail

why else would a peacok's tail

its blue & green plumes

dozens of eyes staring heavenward

be created if not the pleasure & gaze 

of men?

special creation

it seemed god big on omnipotence hadn't got it quite right

so the old testament had to be re-scribed, re-read & re-invented

till the theologians came up with special creation

bettadine for a bullet wound some might say but it lasted a hundred years

where god had set forth all his creatures in just the right places:

polar bears white woolled for the artic, kangaroos for the bounding

wastelands of australia, leopards spotted for the shaded south american

undergrowth and it seemed they knew not to go elsewhere

and that never the twain should meet,

wallace's feet

wallace's feet swelled like eggplant

darkening & peeling away in sores

he though he could smell

their disintegration: like the smell

of rotting wood & mangrove swamps

before the monsoons

after days trapped in his tent

with his rotting feet

he had time to think of god's 

allocation of creatures

and knew it had more to do

with rising water than any divine hand

he annointed his feet in the river

wahsed them dry with his own hands

and hobbled aboard the next prau  to macassar

dear mr darwin

"then one day darwin received a manuscript in the mail from a young, obscure naturalist named wallace - and to darwin's horror, contained his own precious concept, a concept he had not quite refined."

dear mr darwin

in bed with the fever

falling in & out of cold fits

I remembered malthus & his population checks

and in the half-daze of fever

it seemed so simple that all creatures

had these same checks - 

a process of natural selection

where those removed from these checks

must be on the whole inferior

and would die out when the fitter appeared

please read my mauscript

and see what you  think

I hope it doesn't appear too aberrant

just  wild theorising in jungles

ten thousand miles from home

darwin at home

he watched as the candle flame 

caught the corners of the letter

for a moment feeling his hand

move to put out the igniting paper

then watched as it darkened

it reminded him of how

a small sail might burn

the outlines of ink blending

into the surrounding darkness

as if wallace had sent a letter of silence

later darwin would tell friends

that he received the letter much later

but it had been mislaid

its origin lost in all those papers

that cluttered his desk.