Axolotl by David Wheatley

(Mocker, Gallery Books)

Ambystoma mexicanum

All the blood has drained from my face.
Arrowheads of Canada geese convey
formation victory signs to the shivering
pond this winter Sunday, and within
our indoor park, the misting-over-
before-my-glasses conservatory,
the rosella whistles ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’
and two axolotls squirm in their tank
beside the piranhas as though fresh woken
from the formaldehyde surprise
of survival through geological time,
the years of hoarding their Aztec god
of a name under a stone. Notable for their
‘permanent retention of larval features,
such as external gills’, and also for
their black eyes, not red: not alibied
by truant pigment but thus by design.
Rhythmically the anemone ruffs fan out,
batting at us but nonflirtatious:
they will not mate, not with our gaze
and not with each other, but celebrate
their pyrrhic victory, pyrrhic defeat,
as best they know how. They hang
in the water, borne along on the tank’s
absent ripples, passing each other like
waterborne toys, dangling mobiles.
Evolve or die! Or: fail to evolve
and survive just the same! – And at night,
hoisted on their pudding hind legs
they rattle the locked conservatory door
for as long as their held breath lasts
and slouch back to their tank to weigh it all up:
the evolving or dying, the dying or surviving,
the evolving or dying or staying the same –
decisions, decisions – these millions of years.

From Mocker (2006) by kind permission of The Gallery Press
www.gallerypress.com

In spite of the fact that it looks as if it might be a close relative of the amoeba, it can’t type and it won’t cook spaghetti, the axolotl still manages to exist. Perhaps its ancestors thought: “Hey, this isn’t a bad shape to be in, we’ll keep it; we can breathe in water, we can float, we can move forwards and backwards with these stumpy legs of ours, we get to have sex and procreate, why evolve? We’re perfect as we are!”

When David Wheatley’s poem begins with the blood draining from his face, followed by Canada geese flying overhead, I imagine him to be outside – and freezing, since the Canada geese are not just in V shapes but in “formation victory signs” over “the shivering pond this winter Sunday”, as if in a sky-born sneer as they pass by on their way to a warmer climate. In contrast, the “indoor park” is the conservatory, where the poet’s spectacles mist over as the cold lenses meet the warm air, and the axolotls (Mexican salamanders) live beside the piranhas and rosella (an Australian parrot). The axolotls “squirm in their tank” as if recently woken from a long sleep, during which human beings developed opposable thumbs and the ability to communicate through the use of nouns, verbs and syntax. Wheatley likens this suspended development of the axolotl to the stasis of a creature preserved in formaldehyde, and “Aztec god/ of a name” alludes to the fact that “axolotl” is derived from the Nuhuatl for “water servant”. The Nuhuatl, along with the Aztecs, were a group of people native to southern Mexico and Central America.

The pace of the poem echoes the unhurried movements of the axolotls themselves as they dangle like mobiles in their body of water. With their “permanent retention of larval features,/ such as external gills” axolotls retain aspects of their prepubescent incarnation. Their end design appears rooted in the prehistoric past as if evolution drove by like a number 26 bus. (So they thought they’d catch the next one, but it was cancelled and they found themselves stuck in their skins, just as they were, forever.)

Wheatley imbues them with the power to celebrate their pyrrhic victory or pyrrhic defeat (in surviving the evolutionary process apparently unchanged), these being the same thing but for the small matter of perspective and self-satisfaction. “Evolve or die! Or: fail to evolve/ and survive just the same!”

Often a poem will set me thinking about an otherwise unrelated idea that is associated only, perhaps, by a word. In this case the idea of the axolotl’s evolution brings our own to mind, and I think of how we developed an upright stance, war, money, consumerism and gimmicks like the “I am not a plastic bag” bags, which were intended to replace plastic carriers. Instead they became a fashion fad. Limiting the edition skewered their purpose, creating desire, which created a buying frenzy, which created an obscene resale market (itself a form of consumerist evolution).

An axolotl wouldn’t be seen dead in one, of course, and I wouldn’t be seen carrying one. It would mean I had either queued for hours like a sheep, or bought it for someone else’s profit – and my loss – off the internet. We should write our own labels in colourful waterproof ink on cotton squares cut from old clothes (very eco-friendly and cost-effective), saying “I am not a plastic bag” and pin them to hessian bags, wicker baskets or cardboard boxes. Better still, why bother with the label at all? Why not just carry a bag that isn’t plastic and know that it isn’t. Then we will have evolved beyond the self-imposed limitation that requires pointless labels, and will be on a par with axolotls, satisfied with our lot. We should have moments in our lives when we take a holiday from our “must-have” anxieties to enjoy a “what-we’ve-got” axolotl epiphany, evolution being evident in our state of mind and not our most recent acquisition.

Axolotls must be happy just being axolotls or they would have developed into something else by now. They must have taken the advice of that old saying “count your blessings” and decided that their blessings were many.

But the axolotls in the poem are given a night-life that implies some dissatisfaction with their containment; “they rattle the locked conservatory door/ as long as their held breath lasts”. Wheatley endows them with cognitive thought when no one is looking, and perhaps the hope that they might propel themselves beyond their evolutionary restrictions by first escaping their physical confines. In my mind they assume human proportions in doing this; it’s just too hard to imagine a tiny axolotl wrapped around the door handle trying to turn it. Then they “slouch back to their tank to weigh it all up”, returning to their millions of years of decisions to evolve or not evolve, to die or survive; to buy that must-have bag, coat, car or gadget or to live on without it just the same. And be content.

frieda.hughes@thetimes.co.uk

Times Recommends

• The Sunday Times 100 best holiday reads
• What will we be reading this summer: the booksellers predict
• Literary festivals: a survivor’s guide