Hic Svnt Leones

Hic Svnt Leones

Lauren Delapenha

When the two-tonne adult male buffalo
buckles under the weight of six lions,
listen. No sound, then, beyond the labour
of hunter, hunted, hurting each other only
as needed for the body to believe
what the eyes, gathering flies, already know.
See in the formality of teeth sunk deep
in flank and spine and snout a kind
of tenderness that belies affection.
What I’m asking: when we’re ready to kill
each other, we do it just so. Don’t speak
unless in the declensions of the dead
language reserved for the finer disgraces
of prey approaching the end of regret
as one might near a brother or a friend, like Christ,
or Cain, who, before great pain, stood
among the olives and the hard hours
before dawn distinguishes blood
from sweat, and, half smiling, threatless,
said, Rise, let us go.

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Lauren Delapenha
Poet & Teacher

Lauren’s work has received an Oxbelly Fellowship, a Helen Zell and Jamaica Poet Laureate’s Young Writers Prize for Poetry, a Grindstone International Poetry Prize, and a Pushcart nomination. Her poems have appeared in DMQ, Stand, The Scores, The Crank, PREE, and various anthologies.

Photography by Keyur Nandaniya