Extract from the book: Love, Hades & Other Animals

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Poem by Wendy Woodward from her anthology
Love, Hades & Other Animals

 

Who speaks for the Jaguar?
This is the wrong question to ask, rendering her “permanently speechless, forever requiring the services of a vetriloquist” Donna Haraway

 

How to speak with her instead?
when we wield a language
of stolid sounds, too primitive
for her deep shades
where smells may sing
and glances may trumpet narratives
we can scarcely guess at?
But what if no razor-pawed translator
volunteers to take up a soap box
on the forest floor
to stand, a Dolittle in reverse,
interpreting her life codes
for those who believe they command the present,
while the future absconds to a place more habitable
than this earth we have made deadly?

 

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