The turtle who looked at Napoleon

    Exiled to Saint Helena
    in the South Atlantic, in 1815 Napoleon turned
    to gardening, turning the soil with the
    simple implements at hand, spacing the tiny seeds
    in straight long rows with military precision.

    Napoleon's jailer, Sir Hudson Lowe found
    himself as bothered by rows of the Corsican Guard disguised
    as radishes, ranked across the earth outside
    his office window, as by Napoleon's contentment.
    In a singular act of creative malevolence,

    Lowe sent off to the Galapagos
    for two giant land turtles.
    The frigate bearing them arrived,
    Lowe named the turtles Jonathan and Josephine
    and set them loose in the garden of Napoleon.

    Bulldozers by nature,
    the giant tortoises nosed up and
    swallowed down the radishes, tomatoes,
    turnips, carrots and onions, smearing
    Napoleon's careful rows into the dust.

    Over morning coffee, through office window bars
    Sir Hudson sat smiling at Napoleon's eaten and
    uprooted, flattened garden.
    One day as he watched, Napoleon himself
    rounded the corner, moving slowly, contemplating the sea.

    Dressed in gardener's tunic, head towel-draped
    against the heat of the South Atlantic sun,
    Napoleon bumped along, crouched on the back of
    Jonathan, eyes straining past the breakers, as if
    to spot Nelson's flagship.

    Lowe watched, somewhat dismayed
    as Napoleon surveyed
    the sea from his rolling helm,
    squinting into the noon sun for the
    mirage of his emancipation.

    But Napoleon died in 1821, his power drained,
    unable to adapt to turtle life:
    powerless to attain contentment
    in slow uncoverings, green vegetation
    and long waiting.

    Wild goats pulled up the grass of the Galapagos,
    and the big land turtles suffered starvation, their
    ancient ranks further thinned by sailors
    who found them excellent for soup and shell.
    But fine grass grew on the grave of Napoleon, and

    on the grave of Jonathan's mate, who died soon after
    of some turtle disease.
    A turtle grieves long,
    but Saint Helena offers
    food and good weather,

    and Jonathan remains there today, lifting his old head
    among the flies, "Bonaparte," still barely legible,
    carved low near the rim of his giant shell.
    Jonathan opens a red-rimmed, baleful eye
    to the morning,

    an eye that gazed upon Napoleon,
    the eye of a turtle of destiny, who thought
    no more of the little man long ago riding
    than he thinks of today's flies.
    But Jonathan still

    considers the radishes, as they
    arrive each day at sunset,
    compliments of the British government,
    a longtime legacy of Sir Hudson Lowe,
    and Jonathan is often content.

    In 1840 Napoleon's remains
    were shipped to Paris; In the compound in Saint Helena
    little of Napoleon but his death mask now remains.
    Not even a tree grows there still, that gave Napoleon shade.
    But Jonathan moves slowly on

    across the volcanic surface,
    through what once was a garden, resolute,
    his three-chambered heart slowly beating,
    eye upon a nearby clump of grass, as green
    and new as once upon Galapagos.

      Michael McNeilley
      © 1997


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