The World Entire
Ray Bub
I read about this somewhere.
I should google it
But I don’t.
A turtle sits on a fencepost
On a windswept prairie
In Australia? Kansas?
Far from the coast.
Green with brown accents:
A hawksbill or a box?
Who put it there?
I did
In your mind.
The post is quite wide, circular,
Flat, gray weathered end grain mostly
Covered by turtle.
Three strands of rusty barbed wire
Connect our turtle-topped post
To a second post on which sits
A macaque, or is it a howler?
I can’t quite see.
Not-shiny turtle moves its flippers languidly.
We need to bring our turtle—
You own it now also—
To its specific tan sandy beach,
So, help me here,
Carry our friend down to the surf’s edge.
Maybe howler can help?
I should google howler
But I don’t.
The water is warm, foamy, salty, strands of kelp,
Can you picture it?
Lower our friend gently.
You have saved one magnificent turtle,
And from hawksbill’s eye,
You have saved the world entire.
***
Now that you’ve read the poem:
The “World Entire” quote is an old Jewish statement from the Talmud: “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” I learned it from a memorable scene in the difficult but very important Steven Spielberg movie, “Schindler’s List.”
Late in the movie, Oskar Schindler, played by Liam Neeson, is talking mournfully to his accountant Itzhak Stern, played by Ben Kingsley, that he should have done more, he should have tried to save more Jews from the Nazis. Stern replied with the Talmud quote, implying that the world always exists only through an individual person’s eyes, even in a mob or a crowd or a population.
In this poem I have expanded this to, as Buddhist philosophy emphasizes, “All sentient beings.”
Information About “Schindler’List”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schindler%27s_List
From the Wikipedia entry:
As a Nazi Party member and war profiteer, Schindler must flee the advancing Red Army to avoid capture. The SS guards in Schindler's factory have been ordered to kill the Jewish workforce, but Schindler persuades them to "return to [their] families as men, instead of murderers.” Bidding farewell to his workers, he prepares to head west, hoping to surrender to the Americans. The workers give him a signed statement attesting to his role in saving Jewish lives and present him with a ring engraved with a Talmudic quotation: "Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Schindler is both touched and ashamed, feeling he should have done more. He breaks down in tears and is comforted by the workers before he and his wife leave in their car. When the Schlinderjuden awaken the next morning, a Soviet soldier announces that they have been liberated. The Jews walk to a nearby town.