I was entertaining guests but my thoughts were on the lion

The women’s blooming skirts looked like thick manes

The men’s sly eyes like gleaming predators

My servant fetched me right before I burst:

“Did you order a…lion, sir?”

 

The guests were shooed away, off to the night

No right to be here, and on a Wednesday.

People are far too confusing for me

If you don’t get them right, it’s obvious

If you draw their eyes too wide, chin too thin

Your instincts alert you of the mistakes.

It’s hard to look at, misconstrued figures.

 

Dogs, stags, other animals, my lion

If I’m off with them, you hardly notice,

As we aren’t well acquaintance with nature.

Animals don’t take offense with a sketch,

Couldn’t care if they tried and tried and tried.

So, I can use my left hand or my right.

 

The lion arrived frostbitten and bruised,

In a cage but there was really no need.

It lay there, blinked, batting thin eyelashes

Its sunken left eye like my old father,

Set, rooted, a marble ready to tumble

The bulging right eye, my Marochetti,

Veins popping as he harbors my presence

 

One dying lion into four bronze ones.

That was my agreed governmental task.

The zookeepers who left him gave no name,

No collar with a bright bell and bronze plate.

His sullen face had deadly gaps to fill,

A face not fit for public remembrance.

I would reference descriptions in books,

But academics had their own vagueness.

How to make four out of one?

 

I held the lamp to his matted hay fur.

The silhouette of his body moved about;

Across the wall, I could see him pouncing.

Instinct kicked in quickly, I wanted out.

To shoot across my stale, borrowed warehouse

And out into the shocking winter air,

To find the people I had discarded,

Follow them like a line of schoolchildren…

 

My mind flew to yellow-green Fitzroy Square,

71 Queen Anne Street East.

A child, a forced truant, given pens.

Ashamed to not know all that lay outside,

He would make-believe scenes from, of, the past,

The square window always his grey backdrop.

Bubonic plague and piles of bodies…
Stones thrown at those trudging to the gallows…

Flocks of animals forming street traffic,

Impenetrable. Clueless creatures.

 

The yellow box seemed nice in memory.

Once the lion passed, I would have him caste.

I would return to the old flat willingly,

The refuge where I learned to use both hands.

Art-making happening above and below,

Not one of us understanding the world.

 

I grabbed a bottle, and not one of ink.

London would have to wait a bit longer.