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Fauverie IV (Black Jaguar)
Fauverie IV (Black Jaguar)
1.
A solar eclipse – his fur
seems to veil light,
the smoulder
of black rosettes
a zoo of sub-atoms
I try to tame –
tritium, lepton, anti-proton.
They collide
as if smashed inside
a particle accelerator.
But it’s just Aramis sleeping,
twitching himself back
to the jungle, where he leaps
into the pool of a spiral
galaxy, to catch a fish.
2.
Later, the keeper tells me
Aramis has had surgery
for swallowing
a hose-head
where his hank of beef
was lodged. But
what vet could take
a scalpel to this
dreaming universe?
What hand could shave
that pelt, to probe
the organs
of dark matter, untwist
time’s intestines
and stitch
night’s belly
together again, only
to return him to a cage?
from (forthcoming) Fauverie (Seren, 2014), ? Pascale Petit 2014, used by permission of the author and the publisher