ZOO Poem by Fernando Rendón

The beast is the cage



The future comes to us like a caterpillar joy is not eager
The past is a dormouse that snores with few beautiful dreams
Hope is a white phoenix
And my eagerness is a scarlet gazelle hunted down by the king's
greyhounds

This zoo is a city of cages in each door padlocks and
rusty locks in every window bars and eyes

In the corners apes that deny being related to Darwin night
panthers with fire eyes crocodiles that cry as if
regretting falling in love boas with the appetite of bishops and bankers
macaws with the colors of poetry hyenas that laugh reluctantly
before the tarnished day
lions that lose their dignity and their mane hieroglyphical tigers
men looking into their eyes into the infinite eyes of the animals
and many jailers chained to their irons

When you grow up help us open all the cages.

To the children