The Beast

He sits, compressed, unstirred, contained
entirely within his outlines, he presses
upon his tender paws with the unweighing weight of his
contended universe, discerning its soft movement, unmarred
by the dried mauve stains upon his fur,
by his elementary memory falling into the crevice

of the same sensation returning evermore –
of the twitch, the sudden fear, dartlike, shot
across the grass, legs jerking up, spiralling into the hot
sweat-saturated atmosphere, no matter how long ago
it happened. It is here, pulsating fast,
ascending through its dissonances to the spot

in his inner sky where it cannot last,
so unendurable it is, choking him with its ever-present bliss,
leading him gulping, breathless through the mist,
like a refulgent ship with a cyan mast
led through the accidental into the azure
surety, embracing his greed, his sudden past.

It prompts him on, inflamed, towards the cure
of the new expectation, the new life moulded now
as he senses a quick movement in the grass, a stirred bough,
his eyelids slide up a little, letting out two demure
green golden lights at once reflected off
the withered fruits on the ground and, unsure

of their destination, searching through the tough
unyielding night for a flicker, an innocence, a little hunger
nibbling at filthy roots. His cherry-red impatient tongue
caresses his fangs with an unconscious love,
touches their sharp tips, trembles behind them,
but does not dare to become assured, to move

outside the mouth, meet the air and the thin stem
of bluegrass frozen between his whiskers, the presence
becoming more and more tangible, his heart, his essence
throbs up in pain, pierced through by this dim
unbearable desire - but he restrains himself, his heart
smashing its way out, pounding like a shapeless hammer,

so much that he begins to retch, to lose his guard,
he wants to throw up, to rid himself of this incessant
beating, he almost shrieks, explodes, becomes too present
to be successful, and then from the hard
rustling wall emerges a fluffy face, a quick care,
sniffing the ground, lips rolled inside, a sad

weepy eye, twinkling through the snare
of reeds, stretching up, with the claws held firm on the soil,
searching in the air, its fore paws point away, but then recoil,
making it complete again, it needs to shift
forward, but also faintly senses something,
freezes, and in an instant sees him, a stiff

enormous mass of fur, the ecstatic torches blazing,
desiring, burning out the flesh behind them, glaring through
the night like two heavy incandescent coins violently thrown
into the dirty pond, and for a moment they
look into each other, eyes melting within eyes,
the difference between the predator and the prey

erased completely, as in a silent lake the grass
growing on the shore, the fleeting images, the flow
of the silver substance become erased, undone, but no –
his heart begins to stir again, this time calmly
because he realises that the time is now his,
the furless bands of skin around his eyes are slowly

regaining their rosy colour, re-establishing the completeness
of his appearance in his woken mind, the paws
press the moss much harder, the muscles collect themselves,
by now his eyes have cancelled everything, the whole
universe, their previous memories, all his life, so
much that if he misses now his palpitating goal,

he won't exist. The weight of this inevitability is more
present than the weight of the star-strewn height,
the stars blowing through their silver horns with all their might,
unheard, unlistened as he senses his body jolted,
pushed out and away, propelled through the pitch-black
stagnation of the past, and – flown in the cold

refreshing, soothing air, winged, deliciously
resurrected, stretched over the miles and miles
of the fragrant forest, curving along the whole size
of the dulcet globe, and lifting it up, and tossing it out,
and smashing it against the wall of his allotted time,
only to be awakened by the wriggling and the dying shout,

the salty dense taste of blood streaming down,
settling him within his new existence, as he holds down
the still twitching erratic flesh, and bites with an unending moan
into its neck, until it stops fidgeting in his nets.
He eats grumpily, tears the skin, gulps, until the hunger is gone,
and sits again, decreases, purrs, forgets.

Вланес, 2006

Сертификат Поэзия.ру: серия 790 № 47863 от 01.10.2006

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