to the trunk of a dogwood in the suburbs
fourteen miles from New York. Bright
in his new coat of paint, his stripes
blend with the mix of light and shade,
his likeness, and only slightly less dangerous.
Across the street, nearly hidden
in dense brushy rhododendron, a bronze swan
glimmers in dots of light like rain or little mirrors,
like medallions. When the light's right they reflect
the tiger, broken into pieces, flattened, tamed.
She doesn't like to hear his panting on hot days
but senses how the chain beneath his chin
chafes skin. Sympathy like light wind
cannot stir her feathers, weighted with metal.
Nights she imagines his slide silent as shadow
to the beds upstairs. Driven out (he is always
driven out), he dreams it's possible to slip
behind the stove or fridge; he spits
like a house-cat when the woman sprinkles water
on the grass and wets his clothes. He misses
his little blue jacket but not the saddle's
golden tassels and gilt trim, and he longs for music,
but not the children climbing and patting.
On long summer afternoons he might doze
in the shade of the garage where blades and spokes,
old bikes and broken mowers, gleam beneath coats
of grime and dust, brown furry frosting, he is manifest
desire and drips like bitten peaches, plums; tigers.
His fine eyes shine with bleack intelligence and blink
in all that dark, and then he stretches, pink
tongue curling. His breast heaves. Bars bow:
he is potential mouth and froth and leap,
brings smells like meat, the scent of mud from rivers
with him, bruises, streaks of old abrasions, chunks
of carrionand traces of wild grasses,
memories of fatty thighs of swans,
their gorgeous splayed black paddle feet.
C. Deena Linett
-I think this poem was writtne in a man's point of view.
He's probably seen a tiger and a swan on the way to his home.
He remembers of the past and longs for desire and something.
He feels a little bit of pity for the animals that are trapped and
tamed in human-ways, not wild enough like real animals.
I also feel pity for the tiger that is tamed and is very quiet unlike
the other tigers with freedom.
The poem can literally tell a story of a tiger that's caught in a zoo or an amusement park.
I thought the tiger was in a zoo or an amusement park, because he said that " he longs for music, but not the children climbing and patting. " It means that he was tamed enough not to eat the children up. Also "old bikes and broken mowers" tells me that the setting of the poem is in a rural area where the bikes and mowering machines are broken. Also if there is a mowering machine, then there is a lot of grass.
The poem might mean about a person who changens his/her own personality to fit in a community. Although there is a hidden desire inside of oneself, he/she should act like a tamed tiger so the others can approach near him/her. After all the work and change, the person longs for the past where he/she could be comfortable and confident. But now it's too late to change, because the time passed a lot that it's hard to go out of it.
"with him, bruises, streaks of old abrasions, chunks of carrionand traces of wild grasses, "this sentence describes of how the person who tried to fit inside of a certain community tried hard and cruelly. The bruises and abrasions are the scars that are left behind all the hard work. For me, the traces of wild grasses show that the person's been at one place (the certain community) for a long time, that he/she is not being able to come out of it again, because he/ she is "chained".
