Lola Ridge: Jaguar

Lola Ridge

(1871-1941)

 

Jaguar

Nasal intonations of light

and clicking tongues …

publicity of windows

stoning me with pent-up cries …

smells of abattoirs …

smells of long-dead meat.

 

Some day-end–

while the sand is yet cozy as a blanket

off the warm body of a squaw,

and the jaguars are out to kill …

with a blue-black night coming on

and a painted cloud

stalking the first star–

I shall go alone into the Silence …

the coiled Silence …

where a cry can run only a little way

and waver and dwindle

and be lost.

 

And there …

where tiny antlers clinch and strain

as life grapples in a million avid points,

and threshing things,

strike and die,

letting their hate live on

in the spreading purple of a wound …

I too

will make covert of a crevice in the night,

and turn and watch …

nose at the cleft’s edge.

 

Lola Ridge poetry

kempis.nl poetry magazine

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