The Chimpanzee

from another zoo, just transported, clasps one hand
to the cage, tentatively
looking, blinking at jabs of light through trees, before entering

the diorama with its un-
real grass, each blade like the green seconds

crushed within a day’s hour. Now the chimp lies in the shape
of a comma, a pause in a sentence having taken

millions of years to arrive. What

would you do? It stood and looked
at dimensionless walls, a veldt pasteled with trees, then suddenly
stopped, the way

a cliff might, then continued the way a child too eager suddenly arrives
at old age.