6.16: ‘The Racing Snail’ by Ted Hughes
His shell, a house too heavy for the wind,
Drags him slow as dusk across the grass.
The earth trembles, quick feet blur and pass,
While he, bound to slime, can only crawl and bend.
He watches, envious of the flash and flight,
Of hares and sparrows chasing the sun’s bright flare.
But he—his trail a silver line of care,
Trapped in the weight of his dampened night.
If only the shell would shatter, wings unfurl,
He dreams of speed, a blur in the racing storm.
Yet nature holds him still, in soft, slow form—
A silent mourner in a whirling world.
pTravis is particularly struck by the phrase ‘bound to slime’ and the general pessimism and sadness of the poem. Lois was right to say that the Potting Shed seems to specialise in trauma! Nearly all his colleagues seem to carry some inner pain and sense of irreparable past failure. It sometimes seems that they were all made for pain. As though that were some sort of organising principle for their identities thought up by a pessimistic creator.
But he is, at least, now confident that Fabian is no enemy of the Order of the Sponge: he obviously has other concerns. And yet, it had seemed that Fabian might have been working for the shadowy Disorder of Catastrophe. That seemed a neat solution.
As he closes the book, something suddenly strikes him as not quite right about their last encounter with Lois’ brother: Lottie’s tutor.