Listen & Be Heard Weekly Archives

For Alan Fong
“The Bengal jungle is being turned into small farms. Soon the Bengal tiger will have to leave the jungle floor for the hills. In those hills, the tiger can easily be hunted to extinction.”

There are still tigers
Who chill the marrow fibers frigid,
Tigers in the hill high lands
And once in “onces” of whims,
And once in “onces” of whiles
One comes down
Onto and into the fields in heat
When the grain crows sigh high
When the grain grows scythe high.

Like the coming of the sun, his coming.
As orange as the sun, his coloring.
His eyes even thrown with the explosive spots of the sun,
He comes, down onto and into the fields in heat.
The orange-striped flame of his head
Fire-sways in the fleck-headed grain
As his path-tracing tail snap-snakes
To spill-melt the sweat-stemmed grain.

He flings-sifts into the grain
And the grain churn-milks up to milk white
Bleached by the flush of the sun
Blanched shivering by the one still tiger
Come down from the hill high lands
Come down onto and into the fields in heat
When the grain crows sigh high
When the grain grows scythe high.

Mother India (1)! Rabi (2)! Indra (3)!
Give me the eyes not to see
The heads of still tigers hanging from walls,
Mother India! Rabi! Indra!
Give me the eyes not to see
The skins of still tigers draped from shoulders.
Mother India! Rabi! Indra!
Give me the eyes to the sun stalking once again
Onto and into the fields in heat.
Mother India! Rabi! Indra!
Give me the sight to see
Bapugi’s (4) dream of those still tigers
Living with the already lambs.

As appeared in New World Finn:Tigers…Winter Quarter 2006

Be Sociable, Share!

•