The Face of the Lion
--Loren Eiseley
The moth-eaten lion with shoe-button eyes
is lumpy by modern standards
and his mane
scarcely restorable.
I held him in my arms
when I was small.
I held him when my parents quarreled
as they did often while
I shrank away.
My beast has come
down the long traverse of such years and travel
as have left outworn or lost
beds slept in, women loved, hall clocks that struck
wrong hours,
photographs
in years forgotten, notes, lovers' quarrels, dear God
where go
our living hours,
upon what windy ash heaps are they kept?
Down what sepulchral chambers must we creep
who seek the past?
I who have dug through bones
and broken skulls and shards
into the farther deeps
rescind
such efforts now.
I cannot practice
the terrible archaeology of the brain
nor plumb
one simple childhood thought. I want no light to shine
into those depths forever
but the lion
sits on the shelf above my desk
and I,
near-sighted now,
take comfort that he looks
forthright and bold
as when
my hands were small,
as when
my brain received him living,
something kind
where little kindness was.
The mirror tells me that my hair is grey
but the wild animist within my heart
refuses to acknowledge him a toy
given by someone long ago
forgotten.
No, no, the lion lives
and watches me
as I do him.
Should I forget
the hours in the blizzard dark,
the tears
spilled silent while I clutched his mane?
He is very quiet there upon the shelf,
as I am here, but we were silent
even then,
past words,
past time.
We waited for the light
and fell asleep when no light ever came.
I do not
delude myself.
The lion's face is slowly changing
into the face of death
but when I lie down
upon my pillow
in the final hour
I shall lie quietly and clutch
the remnants of his mane.
It happens we have known
a greater dark together
he and I.
I am not terrified
if he has come
wearing another guise.
To him the watcher I will trust my sleep,
shoe-button eyes, the lion on the shelf.
