My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear

I was waiting (for ages) at the seafood counter at ntuc for my mom while I noticed the bin with crabs. It wasn't the first time that I observed the little buggers, but there was something different about this group today. Usually only one or two will wiggle around while the others stare languidly at the human faces peering into the bin, but today, it was as if the crabs possessed some strange aura of survival. About a third of them were wiggling about, stacking on top of each other, as if they could form a ladder to reach the top. I felt rather entertained watching them prove their grit, but somehow the traumatising image of the caged seahorses surfaced again. Perhaps the crabs were just released into the bin, so they weren't fully aware that whatever they do, however hard they try, no matter how persistent they were in living through this final ordeal... their death knell has tolled. But then again, comparing them to the seahorses, at least their agony wasn't prolonged. I would rather die ten times over than be trapped in an eternal hell. And I got reminded of this heart-wrenching poem that Whitby introduced to us: 

My Mother Saw a Dancing Bear

My mother saw a dancing bear
By the schoolyard, a day in June.
The keeper stood with chain and bar
And whistle-pipe, and played a tune.

And bruin lifted up its head
And lifted up its dusty feet,
And all the children laughed to see
It caper in the summer heat.

They watched as for the Queen it died.
They watched it march. They watched it halt.
They heard the keeper as he cried,
`Now, roly-poly! Somersault!'

And then, my mother said, there came
The keeper with a begging-cup,
The bear with burning coat of fur,
Shaming the laughter to a stop.

They paid a penny for the dance,
But what they saw was not the show;
Only, in bruin's aching eyes,
Far-distant forests, and the snow.