Set 17: Mondo de Parnasaj Bestoj
Translated by John Gallas

1
Penguin
               Eugène Lefébure (1838–1908)
                    
Blank stares into space: sluggish, careless, dull,
the penguins loll in bunches on the rocky spits.
The mad sea swirls and splashes round their pallid heap.
They watch its endless bother with unbothered eyes.

Why take the trouble? Flapping into stormy skies
with little, stumpy wings that wouldn’t keep you up?
No, no, the sky’s no use. And swimming? So the sea
can chuck you rudely back to shore? A waste of breath.

So, dumb and calm, the penguins, bored to death,
sit in stupefaction in a comfy lump.
(And I know someone just as stupid: someone who

will never take the plunge, will dream but never do;
limp and useless arms, eyes on holiday:
Old Penguin! Total bye-byes can’t be far away).


2
Dream of the Jaguar
               Leconte de Lisle (1818–1894)
                    
Under the black caoba and the tangled, flowered vines,
that hang and coil, thick with flies, amidst the heavy air,
even to the moisty, stagnant roots of all that grows,
the garish parrots scream and swing, the acid spider sews
her poisoned webs, and heaving apes display their needled yawns:
and here, with deadly, tired tread, amongst the rotting trunks
the soft assassin of the cow, the bullock and the stud
returns, his muscled flanks aripple, muzzle gaumed with blood
and gaping, heavy-hung with thirst. ...