Beneath the world of men—of suns and seasons, Down where time lies coiled in dark corridors, In the deep womb of the earth, where waters Wind like threads of memory through stone, The white Čovječija ribica glides, blind-eyed, Through pools of primordial quiet. Lizard of the underworld, flesh-soft And sensing—each limb a whispered touch, A movement in the unseen, In the breathless hush of the cave's throat. Who are you to bear such pale life In the shadows?—your skin like old marble Carved from the bones of ages. You, slow-breathing relic of the earth’s first dawn, You know the drip of water’s century-long patience, The trickle of lightless erosion. You remember, without seeing, The heaving of continents, the slow shudder Of tectonic wills, silent, inexorable. Above, men hammer their frail scaffolds, Their transient histories, their fires of a moment— Yet you dwell where time is stone-stratified, Where the dark walls, silent and unbowed, Fold in their millennial memory. Creature of the womb-world, Feelers splayed like blind flowers Swaying to the pulse of the cave’s secret tides, You are ancient and unconcerned— No god of light will touch you, No sun or wind mark your skin. Beyond our fevered, sun-drenched delusions, Beyond our striving and fall— The cave shall hold you still, Its stalactites dripping like a slow clock Counting down the lifetimes of stars. When we are gone, with all our fraught awakenings, You will slip through your darkness unchanged, Breathing the cold, endless whisper Of waters and stones, unworried By the decay of a species That never belonged here.