Ducks and Tigers
There is nothing to say. There is nothing to do. There is nothing to say or do. A tiger has a duck by the neck or a duck has a tiger by the ear. The ballasts alongside the boat fill each time the bell rings. The executioner strides in, places small pieces of tin along the fence and sits. We wonder if things can go on like this. What kinds of paper tigers and ducks can fill our streets and halls and demand their clocks back, turned back, reset and resold with a carton of eggs. There was a time when hope sprung eternal, just before the justice between ducks and tigers began to shake out, settle — equilibrate — though no duck tried to fly when a tiger came to the edge of the pond and no tiger leapt when ducks led their young in the grass. Hear the calls, the roars, the quacks of great statues crumbling, the buildings coming down, the painful revision of the pond’s wisdom, the pond’s fog, the sweet mist on a black morning when the shadows are the brightest. Tell the ducklings. Tell the cubs. Have them drink below the same reeds. Mind their tails and never let them touch the bottom where red newts lay and stream up after dragonflies. Even now when I look back on the morning a bullfrog took a duckling I see the long eyes of the mother tiger watching from shore, her tail curled around her neck.
