We are large with pity, slow and awkward
In the false country of the zoo.
For the beasts our hearts turn over and sigh,
With the gazelle we long to look eye to eye,
Laughter at the stumbling, southern giraffes
Urges our anger, righteous despair.
As the hartebeest plunges, giddy, eccentric,
From out of the courtyard into his stall,
We long to seize his forehead’s steep horns
Which are like the staves of a lyre.
Fleeter than greyhounds the hartebeest
Long-muzzled, small-footed, and shy.
Another runner, the emu, is even better
At kicking. Oh, the coarse chicken feet
Of this bird reputed a fossil!
His body, deep as a table,
Droops gracelessly downwise,
His small head shakes like an old woman’s eye.
The emu, the ostrich, the cassowary
Continue to go on living their lives
In conditions unnatural to them
And in relations most strange
Remain the same.
As for the secretary bird,
Snake-killer, he suggests
A mischievous bird-maker.
Like a long-legged boy in short pants
He runs teetering, legs far apart,
On his toes, part gasping girl.
What thought him up, this creature
Eminently equipped by his nervous habits
To kill venomous snakes with his strong
Horny feet, first jumping on them
And then leaping away?
At the reptile and monkey houses
Crowds gather to enjoy the ugly
But mock the kangaroo who walks like a cripple.
In the false country of the zoo,
Where Africa is well represented
By Australia,
The emu, the ostrich and cassowary
Survive like kings, poor antiquated strays,
Deceased in all but vestiges,
Who did not have to change, preserved
In their peculiarities by rifts,
From emigration barred.
Now melancholy, like old continents
Unmodified and discontinued, they
Remain by some discreet permission
Like older souls too painfully handicapped.
Running birds who cannot fly,
Whose virtue is their liability,
Whose stubborn very resistance is ther sorrow.
See, as they run, how we laugh
At the primitive, relic procedure.
In the false country of the zoo
Grief is well represented there
By those continents of the odd
And outmoded, Africa and Australia.
Sensation is foremost at a zoo–
The sensation of gaping at the particular:
The striped and camouflaged,
The bear, wallowing in his anger,
The humid tiger wading in a pool.
As for those imports
From Java and India,
The pale, virginal-peafowl,
The stork, cracking his bill against a wall,
The peacock, plumes up, though he walks as if weighted
–All that unconscionable tapestry–
Till a wind blows the source of his pride
And it becomes his embarrassment,
The eye, plunged in sensation, closes.
Thought seizes the image. This shrieking
Jungle of spot, stripe, orange
Blurs. The oil from the deer’s eye
That streaks like a tear his cheek
Seems like a tear, is,is,
As our love and our pity are,are.
(Jean Garrigue)
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Based on Topics: Mind Poems, Sadness Poems, Kings & Queens Poems, Thought & Thinking Poems, Birds Poems, Anger Poems, Grief Poems, Running Poems, Change Poems, Body Poems, Laughter PoemsBased on Keywords: java, embarrassment, long-legged, vestiges, reputed, imports, eminently, procedure, teetering, emigration, greyhounds