[It would seem that I have a thing about escaped felines. I so much enjoyed writing the section of The Chancellor and the Songstress about a lioness escaped from Longleat—a screen memory from my childhood—that I have decided to write another epyllion-style poem about a fugitive lion, panther, or boar. Who knows? I read about it in a newspaper. So it must be true. 

Here then are the first two sections of a new semi-comic serial poem, titled provisionally Sphinx Unloosed.]

Synopsis

Rilke’s panther escapes from the zoo, dons pink, and goes on the rampage in a semi-dystopian Berlin of the near future, haunted by ghosts of Honecker and Hitler.  A ruthless but hapless neo-Nazi sympathizing cop, vows to track down and destroy the beast but is forced instead to confront dark secrets from his own history.

 

Sphinx Unloosed

An apocalyptic poem in 23 sections.

Epigraphs

“Oedipus, the serpent, and the parricide are never far off.”

–-Jacques Derrida ‘White Mythology’

“Those ‘lions‘ whom we fête and feed,
Heroes of sword or brush or pen,
Are they more dignified, indeed,
Than creatures of that nobler breed
Which decorate my den?
The more my fellow-men I view,
The more I love my private Zoo!”

• Harry Graham “Creature Comforts”

“Berlin police launch search after suspected lion spotted on the loose”

— Guardian Newspaper Headline July 2023 

Part 1

Prologue

After Rilke

Her gaze has grown so weary from pacing past

the bars that there’s now nothing to latch onto.

She feels as if there were a thousand bars,

and out beyond those countless bars no world.

Padding about her prison-cell with strong

yet supple steps draws her incessantly in—

a mighty power dances the circumference

of a shrinking circle; and, at its center,

her bold spirit stands stilled. But for the curtains

of her pupils, once in a while noiselessly raised

to let an image slip in and stream on through

her tensed unmoving limbs, until it reaches

her heart unheeded, and then ceases to be.

Part 2

Zoochosis

One lazy eyelid lifts for one microsecond. Flits.

Blinks in the flashlights of the visitors taking snaps.

A smell of junk food and affordable perfume wafts

forward at her from the mass of human flesh.

Furious, she yawns. Content only to take it all in

for now. “That’s it,” she thinks to herself. “I’ve had enough.

Tonight I’m out of here.”

*

The fed up monkeys have quit their chattering for now;

The keepers finish slopping out the rhino cage

and whistle as they go. Keys clank. Lights out. Gnats hang

pointlessly in the pallid dusk. The odd screech, squawk, growl,

purr provide the only punctuation, as the zoo

gate clatters shut. All sleep. Night falls. And she assumes

a sphinx-like pose with outstretched paws, eyes jet black staring

out at a full moon rising beyond her little world.