A Poem by Glyn Edwards

two by two

and the water didn’t recede
and the turtle doves didn’t return

so the paired animals of every species
in existence fed on myopic dark below deck

and abided by an incongruous covenant
that dismissed unique habitat requirements

and frowned upon familial interbreeding,
or dietary adaptations, or territorial disputes, or scent marking,

and insisted all creatures suppress urges to predate,
migrate, hibernate, ovulate, lactate, defecate

except sheep, which qualified for lucrative subsidies
so were admitted flock by flock, to verdant upper decks,

or horses or dogs, more pets than animals anyway,
which had intelligent eyes and lucrative semen

or the herd by herd of dairy cows, perpetually pregnant
to provide milk for the family, and the family cats,

but not for the cats with their eyelids sewn shut
or that mouse with a human ear grafted on its back.

To conserve space, all three elephant genus,
and two classes of hippo were instead carved on their own tusks,

while the five by five different-sized rhino horns
were ground into a homogeneous powder and stored in jars

with lucky red labels and whatever Chinese characters
stand for black bear bile, musk deer glands, tiger bones,

whereas whales and sharks were harpooned two by two
because their size was more threatening out at sea

or perhaps to prevent them depleting the tuna
that swam in mega-shoal by mega-shoal to the trawler nets,

but no records remain of reptiles, none kept on insects,
and there could be no dark decks of humans chained neck-to-neck

because this flood was figurative
and all the animals his already.

Glyn Edwards is a PhD researcher in ecopoetry at Bangor University. His first poetry collection, Vertebrae, is published by the Lonely Press; In Orbit is forthcoming with Seren. He is a trustee of the Terry Hetherington Award for Welsh young writers, and works as a teacher in North Wales.