Fingers: <br />Cramped, you are hardly anything but fidgets. <br />We, active, differentiate the digits: <br />Whilst you are merely little toe and big <br />(Or, in the nursery, some futile pig) <br />Through vital use as pincers there has come <br />Distinction of the finger and the thumb; <br />Lacking a knuckle you have sadly missed <br />Our meaningful translation to a fist; <br />And only by the curling of that joint <br />Could the firm index come to have a point. <br />You cannot punch or demonstrate or hold <br />And therefore cannot write or pluck or mould: <br />Indeed, it seems deficiency in art <br />Alone would prove you the inferior part. <br /> <br /> Toes: <br />Not so, my friends. Our clumsy innocence <br />And your deft sin is the main difference <br />Between the body’s near extremities. <br />Please do not think that we intend to please: <br />Shut in the dark, we once were free like you. <br />Though you enslaved us, are you not slaves, too? <br />Our early balance caused your later guilt, <br />Erect, of finding out how we were built. <br />Your murders and discoveries compile <br />A history of the crime of being agile, <br />And we it is who save you when you fight <br />Against the odds: you cannot take to flight. <br />Despite your fabrications and your cunning, <br />The deepest instinct is expressed in running. <br /> <br /> <br />“An Exchange between the Fingers and the Toes” from Collected Poems, published by Chatto & Windus.<br /><br />John Fuller<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-exchange-between-the-fingers-and-the-toes/
