At the Zoo

No matter how large a cage is, it is still a cage

This   model prison

Wields the power to release its inmates   to an exercise yard

At that hour of the day

All actors in the circus

Are put through their paces

The time of elephants and the time of ants

Are alike in paying honour to their God

The time of human beings

Installs a surveillance device

To monitor each tooth

All day a bare-assed monkey

Paces about with genitals hanging

Its only freedom is not wearing pants

The Manchurian tiger is a perfect beast

As it pounces on a trembling bantam rooster

Breakfast for a predator

Underneath that king-of-the-forest mask   a slave being led about

Like wrestlers performing

Before a cheering audience

They summon up atavistic memories

Shot through with pangs of today’s sorrow

The keeper extols the benefits to living things

Of eschewing money and hunting in the jungle

He gloatingly tells the citizens under him

This is the heavenly kingdom

A parrot that learned to speak complained

Said this human prison went against beastly principles

Right away an eagle drilled holes in its beak

And chained it shut that very day

A jaguar made a prison break

For a time snuck about in the city’s private parts

But finding no cave to hole up in

It met a cruel fate again, this time under truck tires

In this overcrowded world

There is no safer refuge

Than within the walls of a prison

Written in May 2001

Translated by Denis Mair