The Moon and The Zoo

British Poet Laureate Simon Armitage has written a new nature poem to mark the 200th anniversary of international conservation charity ZSL. It imagines the moon as a nocturnal keeper of the London Zoo after dark. It hands back the future of the natural world to humanity at dawn.

 

 

The Moon and The Zoo  

  

It slides in under the turnstile after dark,  

moves in a silent arc at an ancient pace,  

dabs its ointment on the gibbon’s paw,  

nitpicks its way through the troop of gorillas,  

smooths the silverback’s fur.    

The moon  

puts a crystalline glint in the tiger’s eye,  

makes a zebra flicker like old film,  

shushes the two-toed sloth when it stirs.   

On it goes, incognito keeper and carer  

wheeling through tunnels, passing through fences,  

casting the black kite in a platinum glow,  

mending cracked hide with its soft flux   

and welding the armadillo’s chainmail coat.  

A restless otter slips out of its holt   

and rolls the ball of the moon in its feet;  

the full moon smears its milky smile  

on the lips of pups and kittens and cubs.  

It crowns the giraffe in its standing sleep,  

draws out the aye aye’s ET fingers  

for a midnight manicure, blesses a tortoise,   

lifts up its lamp to check on the lions,  

sharpens the warthog’s tusks, brushes the strings  

of the cupboard spider’s jittery web   

without sounding a note, then makes  

a final sweep of the nests and dens.  

 

But there’s still work to do before dawn,  

spreading out through the city, leafleting streets,   

leaving animal dreams under pillows   

and conjuring tundra, rain forest, swamp  

or savannah from gardens and parks,   

lighting up waking minds with wild thoughts.  

Then morning breaks; the moon hands over   

the keys of the world and trusts them to us.  

©Simon Armitage

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