One poem to end with about another hero of mine,
botanist, German, kidnapped by the Dutch
in the early 17th century and taken out to the East Indies
where he lived the rest of his life on the island of Ambon.
He wrote long before Linnaeus and modern nomenclature
the first five-volume flora of the Indies.
The first encyclopedia of the extraordinary objects
of the Indies.
He wrote in a prose that reminds me of Montaigne
and with a sense of wonder that never left him.
He lost his wife, his daughter, and his eyesight
among other things in his life.
He lived to see his books survive
but it was a harrowing life.
The book-- his name, his name by the way
was Georg Eberhard Rumpf and he was
born in the time of Shakespeare and he
lived into the 17th century.
He latinized his name to Rumphius,
and if you're at all interested in him
there's a wonderful book called The Poison Tree of his selected
writings.
Beautifully translated by EM Beekman
published by the University of Massachusetts Press.
I commend it to you.
It's a book of great, great beauty.
Open it and read the essay on the hermit crab to start with.
"The Blind Seer of Ambon."
"I always knew that I came from another language,
and now even when I can no longer see,
I continue to arrive at words.
But the leaves and the shells were already here,
and my fingers finding them echo an untold light and depth.
I was betrayed into my true calling
and denied in my advancement.
I may have seemed somewhat strange caring in my own time
for living things with no value that we know.
Languages wash over them one wave at a time.
When the houses fell in the earthquake,
I lost my wife and my daughter.
It all roared and stood still, falling where
they were in the daylight.
I named for my wife a flower, as though I could name a flower.
My wife, dark and luminous and not there.
I lost the drawings of the flowers in fire.
I lost the studies of the flowers, my first six books
in the sea.
Then I saw that the flowers themselves were gone.
They were indeed gone.
I saw that my wife was gone, and I
saw that my daughter was gone, afterward
my eyes themselves were gone.
One day I was looking at infinite small creatures
on the bright sand, and the next day
is this hearing after music.
So this is the way I see now.
I take a shell in my hand, new to itself and to me.
I feel the thinness, the warmth, and the cold.
I listen to the water, which is the story welling up.
I remember the colors and their lives.
Everything takes me by surprise.
It is all awake in the darkness."
Thank you.