Leopold Blaschka glass animals in Dublin’s Natural History Museum
Wineglass lustre on the mantle’s edge,
Spider jewels of tentacles,
Green star shimmering eyes
Beneath mahogany and glass
In the gallery where no-one goes
Up among the whalebones in the dust
Of Livingstone’s museum.
Oleacina truncata
Tergipes despectus
Onchidoris muricata
Stiliger fuscatus
An island of quiet delights:
Creatures Leopold never saw
Transformed out of lithographs
Amid the Dresden glass eyes.
For a century sitting by their names,
Secretly questioning which miracle
Becomes the maker more.
Chromodoris maculosa
Doto coronata
Coryphella verrucosa
Kalinga ornata
5/6/03 © Peter Topley 2004. All rights reserved.