Au Zoo d’Abidjan / At the Abidjan Zoo
“When men were fighting over the last baguettes of bread in the shops, there was nothing to eat for the animals of the zoo, especially the carnivores who paid a heavy price during this crisis.”
~ Kané Samouka, Directeur, Zoo National d’Abidjan on the effect of the post-election crisis on the animals.
“On ne demande pas à un homme qui a faim si son chien a mangé.”
("We do not ask a man who is hungry if his dog has eaten.”)
~ Proverb
I. Still Life with Animals
a savage heat / cloaks the forest
& the sick dusk /brings no relief
no longer / a derelict zoo
but a still life
where gunshots pulverize
the sky / & wreathe
this concrete prison
where feces & blackwater
clog dens
melancholy pervades
like tear gas /
aged trees sag / each cage is
an unfinished stanza
//
audible waves / of famine
in their bellies / serpents stir
in verdant heaps / & monkeys scratch
their bald heads / as they flay
blackening banana peels
still life /
but for how long?
//
the Iroko trees are cadavers
& at dusk / they are rubied
like hacked tusks
the antiqued eyes / of rifles
flame / between branches
these cages / hold
thin light
& little else
III. Lions’ Lament
for Léa, Simba & Loulou
We were stabled in a scorched mosaic of smoke & fire, while another story blazed beyond the gates. Gone the splendour of our manes, mangy & matted, laurels of sorrow slanting over irises cloudy with want. Gone golden musculature, now disheveled sacks, the fretwork of bone shredding flesh.
We sank to our haunches, limbs crackling beneath us like kindling, too weak to whittle down the bars with our jaws. We hallucinated antelopes ripening at sunset, scarlet racks of meat, glinting pools of water.
O, how we envied the spider drifting between bars, toward the greening spires of the forest, toward the high nucleus of midday sun, unseen from where we sat, in the stench of our own unbecoming.
Hunger tames, but starvation slays. To live beyond our bodies, to wither, to wane. This is what betrayal tastes like: tawny grit of dust, gunpowder, torched tires searing our throats.
Abundance exists only in the larvae ripening in pungent air.
Near the end, we fed on the diminishing dark & the syllables of birds, in this citadel we would never leave.
A tire hung from a rope: a garrote, a gaping mouth & beyond that sightless eye, we saw the zoo wardens as good as hogtied. The need for forgiveness, pressed like a blade, against their throats.
III. The Lioness’ Prayer
for Lala
O my brothers, I beat my paws against your chests, stubbled with mud.
If only you could reap fire from my still-beating heart.
Let me be the hero for once — sidekick become sagacious apex.
Hear me even as the roar dwindles in your ears.
See me even as your retinas tear like the savane’s summer grasses.
Speak to me even as your throats are caked with dust.
Sweep away the bright eggs of maggots.
Drown out the drawn-out breaths of your brothers.
Do not yield to the black beast of hunger.
Do not sleep without dreaming.
Gorge on what’s left of this life, what’s left of the light.
IV. Ode to Two Hyenas
for Tomy & Tito
Stunted heads plunge
into carcasses, backs
spackled black. & an
unmistakable chortle
ejects from apish mouths.
Yellowing eyeteeth
& slather dangle
from sibilant maws
during this symphony
of feasting and vocalizing.
Follow the hyena’s bumpy,
phonetic map: they blather
in glottal stops & consonant
clicks. A higher pitch
for fear & softer grunts
for cubs. A rallying whoop
for feeding & giggles
on a loop for any ruckus.
& don’t forget the growling
vowels & timbre
of their almost-syllables.
A cackle has its glossary
for survival; their argot
supports their bravado.
V. Elephant Memory
for CAN, the only forest elephant at the Zoo National d’Abidjan
In the absence of food, feed on memory:
feet sinking into the silken peat
of the waterhole, hush of mud-seamed faces,
plump tongues glued to the mineral lick,
elliptical ears flapping like fronds.
In the absence of space, forage
for that fragment of wildwood
unfolding slow as October sun,
its knotted tendons of liana
& acacia, sinewed & silvering.
Unyoke yourself from this loneliness,
whose spectral body flattens you
like the harmattan.
Feast on the veined earth
in all its communion:
from its termite skeins
to the deer’s honeyed limbs,
from every smoking copse
to the osprey’s blond oculus.
Imbibe the dreambody
of your father
& the mildewed soul
of your mother —
find refuge there.
Or perish.
VI. The Warden’s Evening Contemplation
The between-work
of the living
is knowing we are,
all of us,
made of longing.
And all our deaths
are as enmeshed
as any understory.
What is this knowing,
if not love?
