It would not have been the slow and stealthy growth of which he wrote:
coral polyps clinging tenaciously to their volcanic host
ascendant sun-worshippers recolonizing ever higher
as the volcano slipped into the deep
Thus the limpid lagoon fringed with a circle of coral polyp reefs:
thus the atoll forming over millennia

From the air amidst the throb of the engine
Darwin could have seen it a different way:
formation from up there and not from below the level of the sea
This Marshall Islands is a string of atoll jewels
looking for all the curious world as if great gobs

So listen to what the old people said
for the creation story under the stars and palms
was the story of Letao not Darwin
of the trickster god not the scientist:
Letao who left his father’s sky kingdom
determined like any son to build himself a home of his own

Happily down he flew over awesome stretches of landless ocean
once to the south to chose a place
doubling back north to find--but how?--

So we see Letao’s two chains of atolls
Ratak where the sun rises; Ralik where it sets
Named as one by a later passer-by
another whiteman in a ship
Labelled on the map: