Adrienne Rich — The Lioness

The scent of her beauty draws me to her place The desert stretches, edge from edge. Rock. Silver grasses. Drinking-hole. The starry sky. The lioness pauses in her back-and-forth pacing of three yards square and looks at me. Her eyes are truthful. They mirror rivers, seacoasts, volcanoes, the warmth of moon-bathed promontories Under her haunches' golden hide flows an innate, half-abnegated power. Her walk is bounded. Three square yards encompass where she goes. *In country like this* I say *the problems is always one of straying too far, not of staying within bounds. There are caves, high rocks, you don't explore. Yet you know they exist.* Her proud, vulnerable head sniffs toward them. It is her country, she knows they exist. I come towards her in the starlight. I look into her eyes as one who loves can look, entering the space behind her eyeballs leaving myself outside So, at last, through her pupils, I see what she is seeing: between her and the river's flood, the volcano veiled in rainbow, a pen that measures three yards square Lashed bars. The cage. The penance.