
David Punter
Selpae
There were a few other animals I think Selpae
floating about. There is a very minute animal
which I have several times noticed
in the tropical seas
moving about on the surface of the water
like a small water beetle
or a fly trying to get out of a bowl of milk.
I cannot at all see its form
but merely the commotion it makes.
Expect to get into Bombay on Thursday next.
(excerpt from the diary of Samuel Archer MRCS, Cork to Bombay 1857)
Selpae
Selpae: asleep, elapse, please, all you get
of this creaturely life afloat or adrift
are re-formations, but they too make a kind of sense:
these tiny creatures, too minute to see may indeed
be asleep until disturbed by the attentions of the naturalist,
and as he watches, alert for the merest movement,
the slightest indication of purpose, motive, motion -
will he notice time elapse as, transfixed as on a pin
and constant in his endeavour to match, to find
similarity, to invent new sea-borne metaphor,
he fails to notice the slipping away, the hiatus
in mind as he is possessed by this new sense of being,
by these creatures who appear to do exactly,
confidently, with commotion, unintelligibly
even to these marvellously adapted senses of man,
whatever it is they innocently, indolently, please?
Commentary
This is one of a series of poems written as responses to extracts from the diaries and letters of passengers held in the archives of the SS Great Britain, the great steamship now berthed as a museum in Bristol Harbour. The whole collection will be published later this year under the title Ship's Log.
