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PAVANE FORAPERIWINKLE

PAVANE FORAPERIWINKLE

I met a periwinkle as I walked along the sand. I slowly knelt beside it and lifted it in my hand. It opened its shell to look at me, its eyes were blue and clear, With melancholy sadness it whispered in my ear. “I’ve been so long a captive, I want to go outside, I want to see the oceans, and swim against the tide, I want to hide from seabirds, and feel the salty brine, But I have always been afraid to leave this home of mine. I see the fishes playing, I see them live and die, I see them struggle as they’re caught and dragged towards the sky, But though I do not feel their grief, I do not know their joy, As I am always fastened to the bottom of a buoy. And while I live here safely, though I have no fear of hell, I will never get to heaven from the inside of this shell. Help me, Oh please help me!” it uttered with a cry. “I want to leave this prison cell just once before I die.” I lifted it from out the shell and placed it in the foam: It swam away and disappeared and I went slowly home. Next day I wandered on the sand in the early light of dawn. The periwinkle lay there, bleeding and battered and torn. I lifted it up gently, and put it in my palm. “I’m sorry,” I said, “so sorry, to see you come to harm.” It answered in a whisper, its voice was faint and weak, Yet clearly I heard every word as it began to speak. “Oh don’t be sorry, my good friend, although I have to die. It’s you who liberated me, and yet I hear you sigh. This is no time for sadness, this is no place for tears. I have lived more since yesterday than all the other years. I felt the warmth of sunlight, I felt the cold of rain, I lay in silvery moonlight, and I felt the joy of pain. I felt the world around me, without a shield between. Truth was all abounding, Oh, the sights that I have seen! I grabbed at life with both hands, I tried to eat it whole. If I must die, what matter? For I have found my soul. You freed me, so be happy: You must promise that you will.” It coughed and twitched a second, then it shuddered and lay still. I walked along the lonely shore until I found its shell. I gently placed it in the home that it had known so well. I stopped, and knelt, and blessed it; then pushed it out to sea. It was the least that I could do, for it had died for me.

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