The Crabs - Brian Vrepont

The crabs are lunching;
An hour I’ve watched, and still they eat,
Pincering microcosms from the scaly rocks,
Time to split-second mouth shutterings
Link Chinamen with chop-sticks;
No disrespect, but Asian they look,
And I on an overleaning rock am humbled.

Such industry is not mine,
Such battering I could not suffer.
The waves hiss and bury the feeders three feet deep,
Avalanches fall on their apparent frailty,
The rock bares, the sea sucks back,
And I laugh to see the crabs uninterruptedly feeding;
The little baby crab holds miraculously rock fast,
Centuried to sea-wash,
Insolently safe, insolently chop-stick lunching
Against the might of the sea.

I laugh, knowing crabs wiser than man;
When man, suicided from his home, the earth
Shall see no lord sun spray gold on wave,
Nor moon come like vespers, go in full song,
Crabs still will ply their chop-sticks,
Knowing nor caring that man is dust.

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Brian Vrepont (1882 - 1955) Australia
Brian Vrepont is a pseudonym for Benjamin Arthur Truebridge