Encounter In The Cage Country

What I was would not workFor then all, for I had not caughtThe lion’s eye. I was walking down

The cellblock in green glasses        and cameAt last to the place where someone was hidingHis spots in his black hide.

Unchangeably they were there,Driven in as by eyesLike mine, his darkness ablaze

In the stinking sun of the beast house.Among the crowd, he found meOut and dropped his bloody snack

And came to the perilous edgeOf the cage, where the great bars trembleLike wire. All Sunday ambling stopped,

The curved cells tightened aroundUs all    as we saw he was watching onlyMe. I knew the stage was set, and I began

To perform    first saunt’ring then stalkingBack and forth like a sentry fakedAs if to run and at one brilliant move

I made as though drawing a gun from my hip-bone, the bite-sized children brokeUp changing their concept of laughter,

But none of this changed his eyes, or changedMy green glasses. Alert, attentive,He waited for what I could give him:

My moves my throat my wildest love,The eyes behind my eyes. Instead, I leftHim, though he followed me right to the end

Of concrete. I wiped my face, and lifted offMy glasses. Light blasted the world of shadeBack under every park bush    the crowd

Quailed from me I was inside and outOf myself and something was given a life-mission to say to me hungrily over

And over and over your moves are exactly rightFor a few things in this world: we know youWhen you come, Green Eyes, Green Eyes.

From Falling (1967)