Snow Tiger

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Ghost sun half
hidden, where did you go?

There’s always a mother
of some other creature
born to fight for her young.

But crawl out of your hide,
walk upright like a man,
& you may ask if hunger is the only passion
as you again lose yourself
in a white field’s point of view.

In this glacial quiet
nothing moves except—
then a flash of eyes & nerves.

If cornered in your head by cries from a cave
in another season, you can’t forget
in this landscape a pretty horse
translates into a man holding a gun.

© Yusef Komunyakaa