Fergus Allen
Dublin Zoo 1930
The flow of saliva cheers me up
Once I can hear the iron wheels
Of Mr Flood's galvanized barrow
Rumbling on the cement and catch
The whiff of horse-flesh on the turn.
Like the other assistant keepers
He works with a fag between his lips.
Levering up the gate a hand's-breadth,
He hooks a joint of knacker's meat
On the prongs of his heavy trident
And forces it into the cage
While I snatch and grab at the opening.
Beyond the partition my mate
Is snarling over a blade-bone.
Thanks be for the bars. Worse than dogs
Are the pale-faced packs in motley
And the young ones screeching like peacocks.
On the farther side of the hedge
A mad voice cries 'Off with their heads'
And soon I'll hear the Red Queen's footstep,
Thump thump along the gravel walk.
Their gaze settles on me like pesticide—
And on the absent-minded sex-life
Of rhesus monkeys, and the gait
Of Sundry, the Indian elephant
With her widow's eyes, as she pads
Over the asphalt on command,
Giving jaunts in a crimson howdah.
Fergus Allen, Who Goes There?, Faber and Faber, 1996.