Poems

Sultry Cat

A sleek sultry cat,
you shimmer through the night,
a dark deadly huntress
with moves that betray my sight.
I tip back my head
and wait for the kill,
bury your claws
in my throat if you will.
Your eyes pin me down
and capture my sight,
I wait for the day
you bring the night.

©Conrad Hubbard

The Tiger

I am the tiger.
I lie in wait for you among leaves
broad as ingots
of wet mineral.

The white river grows
beneath the fog. You come.

Naked you submerge.
I wait.

Then in a leap
of fire, blood, teeth,
with a claw slash I tear away
your bosom, your hips.

I drink your blood, I break
your limbs one by one.

And I remain watching
for years in the forest
over your bones, your ashes,
motionless, far
from hatred and anger,
disarmed in your death,
crossed by lianas,
motionless in the rain,
relentless sentinel
of my murderous love.

I am the condor, I fly
over you who walk
and suddenly in a wheeling
of wind, feather, claws,
I assault you and I lift you
in a whistling cyclone
of hurricaned cold.

And to my tower of snow,
to my dark eyrie
I take you and you live alone,
and you cover yourself with feathers
and you fly above the world,
motionless on the heights.

Female condor, let us pounce
upon this red prey,
let us tear life
that passes throbbing
and lift together
our wild flight.

©Pablo Neruda

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent, starving I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disquiets me,
I search the liquid sound of your steps all day.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
For your hands the color of the wild grain,
I hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your loveliness,
The nose, sovereign of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

And I walk hungry, smelling the twilight
Looking for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barren wilderness.

©Pablo Neruda

There was something wrong
with the animals:
their tails were too long, and they had
unfortunate heads.
Then they started coming together,
little by little
fitting together to make a landscape,
developing birthmarks, grace, flight.
But the cat,
only the cat
turned out finished,
and proud:
born in a state of total completion,
it sticks to itself and knows exactly what it wants.

Men would like to be fish or fowl,
snakes would rather have wings,
and dogs are would-be lions.
Engineers want to be poets,
flies emulate swallows,
and poets try hard to act like flies.
But the cat
wants nothing more than to be a cat,
and every cat is pure cat
from its whiskers to its tail,
from sixth sense to squirming rat,
from nighttime to its golden eyes.

Nothing hangs together
quite like a cat:
neither flowers nor the moon
have such consistency.
It's a thing by itself,
like the sun or a topaz,
and the elastic curve of its back,
which is both subtle and confident,
is like the curve of a sailing ship's prow.
The cat's yellow eyes
are the only slot
for depositing the coins of night.

O little
emperor without a realm,
conqueror without a homeland,
diminutive parlor tiger, nuptial
sultan of heavens
roofed in erotic tiles:
when you pass
in rough weather
and poise
four nimble paws
on the ground,
sniffing,
suspicious
of all earthly things
(because everything
feels filthy
to the cat's immaculate paw),
you claim
the touch of love in the air.

O freelance household
beast, arrogant
vestige of night,
lazy, agile
and strange,
O fathomless cat,
secret police
of human chambers
and badge
of burnished velvet!
Surely there is nothing
enigmatic
in your manner,
maybe you aren't a mystery after all.
You're known to everyone, you belong
to the least mysterious tenant.
Everyone may believe it,
believe they're master,
owner, uncle
or companion
to a cat,
some cat's colleague,
disciple or friend.

But not me.
I'm not a believer.
I don't know a thing about cats.
I know everything else, including life and its archipelago,
seas and unpredictable cities,
plant life,
the pistil and its scandals,
the pluses and minuses of math.
I know the earth's volcanic protrusions
and the crocodile's unreal hide,
the fireman's unseen kindness
and the priest's blue atavism.
But cats I can't figure out.
My mind slides on their indifference.
Their eyes hold ciphers of gold.

©Pablo Neruda

The Panther

From seeing and seeing the seeing has
become so exhaust
edit no longer sees anything anymore.
The world is made of bars,
a hundred thousand
bars, and behind the bars, nothing.

The lithe swinging of that rhythmical
easy stride
that slowly circles down to a single point
is like a dance of energy around a hub,
in which a great will stands stunned
and numbed.
At times the curtains of the eye lift
without a sound - then a shape enters,
slips through the tightened silence
of the shoulders,
reaches the heart and dies.

Cat Eyes animation courtesy of: