Not much wild life, roared Mine leonine Host
from the fringe of a forest of crackles
round an old dome-headed steam radio,
between hotel and river – a mile of bush –
except for the wildcats and jackals.

And he, of these parts for years, was right.
That evening I ventured with no trepidations
and a torch, towed by the faculty
I cannot understand, that has got me
into too many situations.

Under a tree, in filtered moonlight,
a ragged heap of dusty leaves stopped moving.
A cat lay there, open from chin to loins;
lower viscera missing; truncated tubes
and bitten-off things protruding.

Little blood there was, but a mess of
damaged lungs; straining to hold its breath
for quiet; claws fixed curved and jutting,
jammed open in a stench of jackal meat;
it tried to raise its head hating the mystery, death.

The big spade-skull with its lynx-fat cheeks
aggressive still, raging eyes hooked in me, game;
nostrils pulling at a tight mask of anger
and fear; then I remembered hearing
they are quite impossible to tame.

Closely, in a bowl of unmoving roots,
an untouched carcass, unlicked, swaddled and wrapped
in trappings of birth, the first of a litter stretched.
Rooted out in mid-confinement: a time
when jackals have courage enough for a wildcat.

In some things too, I am a coward,
and could not here punch down with braced thumb,
lift the nullifying stone or stiff-edged hand
to axe with mercy the nape of her spine.
Besides, I convinced myself, she was numb.

And oppressively, something felt wrong:
not her approaching melting with earth,
but in lifetimes of claws, kaleidoscopes:
moon-claws, sun-claws, teeth after death,
certainly both at mating and birth.

So I sat and gentled her with my hand,
not moving much but saying things, using my voice;
and she became gentle, affording herself
the influent luxury of breathing –
untrammelled, bubbly, safe in its noise.

Later, calmed, despite her tides of pain,
she let me ease her claws, the ends of the battle,
pulling off the trapped and rancid flesh.
Her miniature limbs of iron relaxed.
She died with hardly a rattle.

I placed her peaceful ungrinning corpse
and that of her firstborn in the topgallants
of a young tree, out of ground reach, to grow: restart
a cycle of maybe something more pastoral,
commencing with beetles, then maggots, then ants.

As I walk with effrontery, alone,
by night, by day, through mists or lights or rain,
in parks and over fields, beneath the sky,
through traffic or in corridors of brick
I carry the scent of your body always
upon me and wear the same shirt until
I find it now stinks of me and has lost
its delicate swan-necked flagon of you.

As I walk with effrontery, alone,
among jostling labyrinths of grey hustlers
perhaps intent, who knows? Who knows! upon
their own happy fornications, although
one could never guess it with certainty
from their glum stifled faces, I recall
our gay expertise and indecorum
on floors, on grass, on beds, the moonlit beach.

As I walk with effrontery, alone,
and suddenly delighted at an apt
quick witticism of yours bursting like
the sun above a thunderous cliff of cloud,
wondering its mocking disrespectful rays
don’t playfully illuminate a few
of the very sober pates about me,
I must quench an abrupt laugh with a cough.

As I walk with effrontery, alone,
I contemplate your murder to assuage
the carcinoma of my jealousy
thinking how next time I sprawl beside you,
a hot afternoon breeze probing the curtains,
my teeth against your honey coloured throat,
an instant’s clench will salve it, slake it all –
the love, the fear, the channels of your life.

As I walk with effrontery, alone,
I know that I am lost and should be kept
incarcerated somewhere, peacefully
quiet and padded to recover from
this succubus that now inhabits me,
or whom I inhabit. And pray the gods
spare me that exorcism, electro-
convulsive or other fell therapy.