What is withdrawal?
"The tiger in a zoo"
an item, an artifact
Wasn’t he delicately shaped by the wild
his nails, his teeth's, his stripes, his paw, his paralyzing roar.

Splendorous ferocity
One wonders, what hailed him
arousals...deep dark shimmering intelligence
priceless spirit
What relations gave him his existence
could we, the late comers
ever trace his arrival
from that which now withdraws, departs
fossilized bones
his nail and his teeth followed his bright eyes
Here now, it follows nothing.

The one that hid *
Given birth by the ancestral spirits of Cows
Fiery splendor fed by wild sacrificial grass.
Its brain, its posture, its hunger too,
before the last echo
Only silence.

Like mans arrival
His own was never in question.
And Mans poem
Has hardly begun.





notes:
*These hymn chant about Agni as the progenitor of Tiger..
One immediately encounters several interlocking metaphors for example: Agni is often called the sacred cow and as the wild one, it is he who hides in her, in the same way as clarified butter is found to be hidden in milk, so also in the wild kusa grass, in the same manner, to impart knowledge or education is said to be fire enabling, that is to en-light, to illumine, that is to make brighter is how the shining Agni manifests in the body of all creatures.

Further, It speaks about the fiery, that is, the flames and flumes that colors and which as Agni personified decks the tigers body (fire like black and white strips) and also the wild summer grass that grants him camouflage, the wild buffalo being his intentional focus and for the hunt and for the sake of which every thing shapes up and falls in place.

At a much deeper level it sings and chants about the very grounds of intelligibility. Agni is said to have three facial expressions (later Shiva borrows the title of Trimurti) which are "Showing", "Shining" and "Saying", together the three forms the intentional-arche which informs and guides the Tiger by transforming his world into meaningful objects, signs and gestures, that is, his particular-creature specific existential sensibility/intelligibility, that is, it grants and makes intelligible its specific tigerness.
The three are co-joined, in the precise sense that there is no Showing without Shining and Saying and vise versa and that is the reason why Agni is called Brihas-pati the Lord of Speech, for example: (Ila, Bharati, Sarasvati ), and as fire, he is said to be the illuminator in whose light we know/see and that which illumines and fills all our Seeing/Knowing/Showing/Saying.

His fourth manifestation is said to be a mystery; it is the most hidden and utterly self pervading. In the previous he is said to mark and grant the unique, that is, for example: The tigerness. Here he is declared to be the very grounds for any being specific world to appear and manifest. He is conscious like, he is the Arche-access, and as this sense-enabling prerequisite, he is said to hold all three (Showing/Shining/Saying) and at the same time to supersede each by the virtue of his language like in-beingness; just as the whole fills and is always greater then the sum of its parts, he can only be approached by the other sort of poetry, that is through powerful chants or Hymn like word-illuminants, that is via the very access enabling quality which opens up indirect poetic access to specific beings and their world, not approachable through any other means.