The Pangolin

Another armored animal–scale

lapping scale with spruce-cone regularity until they

form the uninterrupted central

tail row! This near artichoke with head and legs and

grit-equipped gizzard,

the night miniature artist engineer is,

yes, Leonardo da Vinci’s replica–

impressive animal and toiler of whom we seldom hear.

Armor seems extra. But for him,

the closing ear-ridge–

or bare ear licking even this small

eminence and similarly safe

contracting nose and eye apertures

impenetrably closable, are not;–a true ant-eater,

not cockroach-eater, who endures

exhausting solitary trips through unfamiliar ground at night,

returning before sunrise; stepping in the moonlight,

on the moonlight peculiarly, that the outside

edges of his hands may bear the weight and save the

claws

for digging. Serpentined about

the tree, he draws

away from danger unpugnaciously,

with no sound but a harmless hiss; keeping

the fragile grace of the Thomas-

of-Leighton Buzzard Westminster Abbey wrought-iron

vine, or

rolls himself into a ball that has

power to defy all effort to unroll it; strongly intailed, neat

head for core, on neck not breaking off, with curled-in feet.

Nevertheless he has sting-proof scales; and nest

of rocks closed with earth from inside, which he can

thus darken.

Sun and moon and day and night and man and beast

each with a splendor

which man in all his vileness cannot

set aside; each with an excellence!

"Fearful yet to be feared," the armored

ant-eater met by the driver-ant does not turn back, but

engulfs what he can, the flattered sword-

edged leafpoints on the tail and artichoke set leg-and

body-plates

quivering violently when it retaliates

and swarms on him. Compact like the furled fringed frill

on the hat-brim of Gargallo’s hollow iron head of a

matador, he will drop and will

then walk away

unhurt, although if unintruded on,

he cautiously works down the tree, helped

by his tail. The giant-pangolin-

tail, graceful tool, as prop or hand or broom or ax, tipped like

an elephant’s trunk with special skin,

is not lost on this ant-and stone-swallowing uninjurable

artichoke which simpletons thought a living fable

whom the stones had nourished, whereas ants had done

so. Pangolins are not aggressive animals; between

dusk and day they have the not unchain-like machine-like

form and frictionless creep of a thing

made graceful by adversities, con-

versities. To explain grace requires

a curious hand. If that which is at all were not forever,

why would those who graced the spires

with animals and gathered there to rest, on cold luxurious

low stone seats–a monk and monk and monk–between the

thus

ingenious roof-supports, have slaved to confuse

grace with a kindly manner, time in which to pay a

debt,

the cure for sins, a graceful use

of what are yet

approved stone mullions branching out across

the perpendiculars? A sailboat

was the first machine. Pangolins, made

for moving quietly also, are models of exactness,

on four legs; on hind feet plantigrade,

with certain postures of a man. Beneath sun and moon,

man slaving

to make his life more sweet, leaves half the flowers worth

having,

needing to choose wisely how to use his strength;

a paper-maker like the wasp; a tractor of foodstuffs,

like the ant; spidering a length

of web from bluffs

above a stream; in fighting, mechanicked

like to pangolin; capsizing in

disheartenment. Bedizened or stark

naked, man, the self, the being we call human, writing-

master to this world, griffons a dark

"Like does not like like that is obnoxious"; and writes error

with four

r’s. Among animals, one has a sense of humor.

Humor saves a few steps, it saves years. Uningnorant,

modest and unemotional, and all emotion,

he has everlasting vigor,

power to grow,

though there are few creatures who can make one

breathe faster and make one erecter.

Not afraid of anything is he,

and then goes cowering forth, tread paced to meet an obstacle

at every step. Consistent with the

formula–warm blood, no gills, two pairs of hands and a few

hairs–that

is a mammal; there he sits in his own habitat,

serge-clad, strong-shod. The prey of fear, he, always

curtailed, extinguished, thwarted by the dusk, work

partly done,

says to the alternating blaze,

"Again the sun!

anew each day; and new and new and new,

that comes into and steadies my soul."