"A servant said: This one's getting the mange."
R. Musil, Three Women. The Portuguese Woman, 1924.
Who let it off the leash?
Now it's slinking away

Two rabbits in fluffy
form, perpendicular ears, stare

Hypnotically. A peacock butterfly
pinned by their rabbit gaze

I, too, am beginning to feel quite narcotic
as this beast regards me, this lapdog

In a belled collar
whose scowl begs retaliation

And I, the leading fossil, am its man
up to now, difference has kept its distance

That's finished, the facades crack
and one attacks, another bites back, but

No, they're still fixed in a Letraset tableau
which separates, and thus prevents the worst

If one doesn't allow the species to rub off
instead sticks them as figures in an open plan

Facilitated by the administrative districts
amid urban studies of the usual garbage, landscape

And passers-by, a distribution
wherein the ichneumon plays manager, then one

Has nothing to fear, the breeds
distinct, set, justified as

Contemplation, on offer to the highest bidder
taxidermied for the clearance sale
The final items are reduced, the insects
only sold in sets, yes, the

Snail, with its house, isn't priced, everything
on top there is free, and must

Go! No, this stuff isn't used, it only
seems so. Are you kidding? This one is genuine

Hand-painted. Don't touch the display!
Minima Animalia is easily damaged

A bargain, a respite in the current trade
eyecatching, the fruit of a branch of industry

Redistributed on a field where "every
swallow of contentment is with betrayal

Primed," fussily arranged fluffi-
ness, which comforts until someone

Feels called upon to usher it into
being by the fur on its neck, masterfully drawn

An air-conditioner, bored
eternally in the gallery, bemused, chortles dis-

Continued and gently doubts that it's
enough, these Arks in oil, to head off

A possibility outrageous as a dodo, when
someone, schooled well in boredom, might sit alone

Pour another glass, and wonder more than a little bit
how one can live like this! Painters'

Broom colours the cat with pigment that
would poison it. Everyone want to sing

Of what they love. The mouse-eared bat
in the car showroom, that black-faced

Lion tamarind, but here there is no-
where to sit and barely time to really
Look at the tree, through the family album
of colours and forms, to linger

Is one involuntarily human
but an inhuman being of one's own free will?

Does one therefore keep one's monster in chains and
appoint a knight to guard it?

From the mind's jackass adolescents who, despite
the damage they do, goad it, and, Christ,

Won't leave it alone. And the cost
of it! First the armour, then

He won't climb on board without a horse
what with night shifts and

Sick leave, in fact one needs two
like those rabbits, though, as we all know

If you've got carrots and a couple of rabbits
soon you've got more than a couple of rabbits

And you need more carrots. Animals
are nothing but trouble!

English versions by Karen Solie