I, the baboon, learned was that
in every direction I took this world is
bars and more bars.
Everything I see is striped
like the bars of a tiger’s pelt.
They say somewhere there are free monkeys.
I have seen nothing
but an infinity of kindred prisoners
always behind bars.
At night I dream
of a jungle bristling with bars.
I live only to be stared at.
The throng they call people comes here.
They like to tease me. They enjoy it
when my rage rattles the bars.
My freedom is my cage.
Only dead
will I be carried outside these brutal bars.
Pacheco, José Emilio. "Baboon Babble." An Ark for the Next Millennium: Poems. Trans. Margaret Sayers Peden. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993. p. 69.
