Recently I came across an interesting exercise where you had to write a high school report card for famous people real or imagined and the writer gave 2 examples.

Todesfuge really creeped me out and I just could not work out why. I mean obviously the images were extremely disturbing and based on fact. Celan had been in one of the camps himself
But that does not explain everything

When I finally realized what it was - it seemed so bleeding obvious

This pretty famous and very old poem from Robert Louis Stevenson sort of gives the game away

From a Railway Carriage

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,
Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle,
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.

Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And there is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart run away in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone for ever!


Now if this poem were about a snail, it just wouldn't be quite the same ;)