Artists and Their Subjects at the Jardin des Plantes in Paris
I abhor all zoos, game parks, marine parks, aquariums, animal circuses, and any other commercial venue for wildlife captivity. I do not include centers for the rescue and rehabilitation of sick and injured wildlife as they do good work. I am talking about scenes such as the above. It just makes my skin crawl to think of the misery these poor creatures endured.
The roar of a captive lion woke me in the night last week. I was staying with friends at the beach near Bandon, Oregon. A "game park" is nearby and the lion is in residence there. A poem came to mind before sleep returned that night. The poet Rainier Marie Wilke visited the Jardin des Plantes. His visit inspired this:
The Panther:
His gaze against the sweeping of the bars
has grown so weary, it can hold no more.
To him, there seem to be a thousand bars
and back behind those thousand bars no world.
The soft the supple step and sturdy pace,
that in the smallest of all circles turns,
moves like a dance of strength around a core
in which a mighty will is standing stunned.
Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides
up soundlessly — . An image enters then,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs —
and in the heart ceases to be.
- English translation by Stanley Appelbaum
has grown so weary, it can hold no more.
To him, there seem to be a thousand bars
and back behind those thousand bars no world.
The soft the supple step and sturdy pace,
that in the smallest of all circles turns,
moves like a dance of strength around a core
in which a mighty will is standing stunned.
Only at times the pupil’s curtain slides
up soundlessly — . An image enters then,
goes through the tensioned stillness of the limbs —
and in the heart ceases to be.
- English translation by Stanley Appelbaum
