Locked In

All my life I live in a coconut.
It was cramped and dark.
Especially in the morning when I had to shave.
        But what pained me most was that I had no way
to get into touch with the outside world.
If no one out there happened to find the coconut,
If no one cracked it, then I was doomed
to live all my life in the nut, and maybe die there.
       I died in the coconut.
       A couple of years later they found the coconut,
cracked it, and found me shrunk and crumpled inside.
      "What an accident!"
      "If only we had found it earlier..."
      "Then maybe we could have saved him."
      "Maybe there are more of them locked in like that..."
      "Whom we might be to save,"
they said, and started knocking to pieces every
coconut within reach.
      No use! Meaningless! A waste of time!
A person who chooses to live in a coconut!
Such a nut is one in million!
     But I have a brother-in-law who
lives in an
acorn.

Ingemar Gustafson, English Translation by Mary Swenson

doomed to live .... in the nut: there would be no escape from inside the nut
shrunk: become small
acorn: the nut of an oak tree