Living someplace else is wrong
in Jerusalem the golden
floating over New England smog,
above paper company forests,
square brooders on the rotten rivers,
developer-chewed mountains.
Living out of time is wrong.
The future drained us thin as paper.
We were tools scraping.
After the revolution
we would be good, love one another
and bake fruitcakes.
In the meantime eat your ulcer.
Living upside down is wrong,
roots in the air
mouths filled with sand.
Only what might be sang.
I cannot live crackling
with electric rage always.
to run, cursing those
who can't keep up.
Give me your hand.
Talk quietly to everyone you meet.
It is going on.
We are moving again
with our houses on our backs.
This time we have to remember
to sing and make soup.
Pack the Kapital and the vitamin E,
the basil plant for the sill,
Apache tears you
picked up in the desert.
But remember to bury
all old quarrels
behind the garage for compost.
Forgive who insulted you.
Forgive yourself for being wrong.
You will do it again
for nothing living
resembles a straight line,
certainly not this journey
to and fro, zigzagging
you there and me here
making our own road onward
as the snail does.
Yes, for some time we might contemplate
not the tiger, not the eagle or grizzly
but the snail who always remembers
that wherever you find yourself eating
is home, the center
where you must make your love,
and wherever you wake up
is here, the right place to be
where we start again.
Freedam, Mike. "Calmunist." Calmunist. N.p., 25 June 2008. Web. 14 Mar. 2015. http://calmunist.com/2008/06/spring-offensive-of-snail.html
The purpose of Marge Piercy's poem is to remind humans what we can learn from snails, such as how to slow down and appreciate the love we carry with us. Like the snail after winter, I too feel "drained as thin as paper," while I wait for the "revolution" of spring (stanza 2). In the cold and dark of winter, I've put off my exercising, and have replaced it with eating sugar and fat and sugar, and I make a promise, that once the spring revolution comes, I will transform into a beautiful size 6 butterfly who runs marathons daily. But Marge Piercy's poem mocks this New-Year's-Resolution-type attitude, especially with the sarcasm in the lines, "After the revolution / we would be good, love one another / and bake fruitcakes." Here, "fruitcake" is a metaphor for the superficial improvements we attempt to make in our lives, while avoiding to make genuine changes. Who likes fruitcake anyway? It's usually something you find in late January that was forgotten for Christmas, still wrapped and hidden in the closet. So you slice it up, and it sits, stale with its ruby red and green gems of "fruit" congealing into the Tupperware at the back of the fridge. And instead of truly reaching towards self-actualization, as the snail does with its innocent and slow life, humans would rather over-chew on their present worries, anxieties, and other stresses by "eat[ing]...ulcer[s]." I know that I am guilty of this, particularly with my procrastination and habits of complaining about things that aren't't going my way. Thus, us humans have a lot to learn from snails, who already know "wherever you find yourself eating / is home, the center/ where you must make your love" (stanza 6).
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