#title The Animal Hungers #author Jesús Sepúlveda #SORTauthors Jesús Sepúlveda; #date 2018 #source [[https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/401-summer-2018/the-animal-hungers]] #lang en #pubdate 2018-09-10 #notes Fifth Estate #401, Summer 2018 The animal hungers for light and strength He hungers . Killing himself while hunting Groaning fatally and the last . Hunger springs Sleepless . There are beasts without burden that dance / grow fiery They warily drink water . Famine distorts Tea or sugar or bread or fuel or a tender hand? . The animal hungers for goodness . The famished grow fat leaving scraps for neither him nor her who remained with her cubs . The animal hungers Tramps through trenches . up slopes Sets out . He rears up on both paws and ransacks a beehive Spreads his wings and throws himself from a cliff . The animal hungers when he moves with the flock or sells his lungs, his eyes his goodness, his fury hangs from meat hooks . There is no slaughterer without slaughterhouses there is a journal. a story. a bus . and the barrio where he who writes grew up . There are massacres . Slaughterers dressed as generals in plastic aprons or doctors in white coats the chemists the priests enrobed . Or gold buttons / stripes or suits Bare-chested or sweaty . When the animal hungers Everything trembles Books crumble The earth quakes . Autumn flowers bloom in the garden In the gazebo unreal and necessary the breeze rushes people stroll by . Home is one who smokes sitting in the patio of his house or in a hotel or silently waits in the corner of his infancy or lingers outside until they open the door . Hunger squeezes through crevices Cuts grooves Breathes Climbs fences Feeds . But the animal doesn’t wait grows weak or devours He is hungry and cold . He doesn’t know how to live with pain and anguish but tries . He prepares tea / bathes or doesn’t . He has had enough . Slurps Dips his bread . Sits still a moment Jesús Sepúlveda teaches at the University of Oregon in Eugene. He is the author of eight collections of poetry and three books of essays, including his green-anarchist manifesto, The Garden of Peculiarities, and his book on Latin American poetry, Poets on the Edge. Translated from Spanish by Bill Rankin