16. The Alpensalamander.

A few days ago I climbed our Hausberg, the Untersberg, just outside Salzburg. I was accompanied by my old friend Alex Humes. After two hours steep ascent we reached the area of open grass just below the precipitous Dopplersteig. As we walked along the path I saw an extraordinary black lizard. He was very small, very shiny and had an oddly expressive face. I tried to photograph him but he escaped into the grass beside the path. However, over the next hundred metres or so we saw at least fifteen more of these black lizards. Alex gamely picked one up for me to photograph. We also saw a baby. The regular tread on its back made it look like a cross between a wet tire and a slug.

In bed the following morning, I uncharacteristically wrote a short poem about the lizards. I then got up to have breakfast and opened the Salzburger Nachrichten. I was confronted by a double page spread about these same lizards, the Black Alpensalamander. They are very rare and only live above 700 metres altitude. They also have the peculiar property of being able to regrow any limb should they lose it. Hence the Alpensalamander is of great interest to scientists and stem cell researchers. There is in fact a website where one is requested to record sightings of the little critter - www.alpensalamander.eu.

I have attached a few photos and the poem:

The Alpensalamander



O salamander, from which dark crevice did you crawl?
From which crazed poet’s fantasy did you creep?
How came you by a black so deep?
How is it that your lightless eyes can see at all?


What dread hand crafted your shiny carapace?
What dread thought your inscrutable face?
Who shaped your back like a wet tire?
Did he know the fearful dreams you would inspire?


The imaginations of the most perverse,
Could not conceive a visage so alien.
You were created from a dread, a chant, a curse,
O fearful reptile, so far from the familiar mammalian!


If I were to cut you, would you bleed black blood?
If I were to crush you, would the world implode?
Are you mortal? Made of flesh, or clay, or mud?
Are you antediluvian? Do you remember the flood?


You sit immobile on my little finger,
What dismal end do you portend?
Of what dark fate are you a harbinger?
Or do you order the long night to descend?


O salamander, do not scrutinize me so!
My race is young and foolish, that I know;
You who are unchanged since the primordial soup,
Grant us the time, allow us to regroup.


Imperturbable, implacable divinity,
The cycle of samsara you have transcended.
Blindly you gaze into lifeless infinity,
And all that is and was, was by you intended.


From your ancient vantage point, how ignorant we must appear;
Sub specie æternitatis, to what folly we adhere.
Now your magnanimity I implore:
Do not condemn us to non-being; do not close the door.


O salamander, do not cease to think on us:
Allow the world to dawn once more.
Tomorrow we progress, we chase success,
We will run further, climb higher, reach the distant shore.