Madonna Lionessa (Part Ii)
ii.
And the glands beside your heart
Some secret of evolution they couldn't understand
So they never troubled themselves to puzzle
Out why you, their sphinx, remained silent
Now begin to purr.
It frightens you.
You had purred after they scratched your proud head
And petted your belly after you had been collared,
The jingling of the bells firstly sounding delightful
Until they became the tolling mournful keening of
The jester's hat, Lear's Fool, sitting sadly at the
Stage Door Canteen in a new costume,
Half-drunk on weak yet cheap well scotch,
Waiting for the sound of the buzzer
To go on as Cordelia, another cat at the end of her rope
Who forfeited a crown, was hunted down, soon to dance
To the satisfied grunts and faux horror of the groundlings.
And now you purr against your will as you
Look at your new owner; you had been
Discarded, abandoned, dumped,
A sad case, this cat,
Who would no longer hunt
But lay in the grass motionless
While mouse and chipmunk and songbird
Who once feared her now jeer her
On their way to larder and nest;
She did not care and was cast behind
Prison bars among contemptible cats
Driven reasonless by indifference
Which was never the source of your problem.
He approaches you at the shelter now;
He has friendly eyes and a soothing voice
But he approaches you with an encompassing hand
You can imagine around your neck
Like a constricting steel collar --
You won't be garroted again.
You hiss, rear back, ready to strike, would strike now
But for the confusing cacophony inside your pricked ears from
The audible purring beating seducing quickening inside your breast.
Can you ever be free of him?
Copyright © Jon Hopwood | Year Posted 2009
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