Finally we’ve made ugly the white tiger, whose predations have even been handsome.
Remember the steaming red of a boar raised like magicians’ scarves in celebration of sacrifice. Remember the warm bib smeared down the tiger’s chin too beautiful to be violence. Gone are these days. Now the tiger’s snout punches in like a pug’s, that guardian of sloth we’ve pried from its own lean regality to place upon our pale kings’ knees. The tiger’s teeth bristle from its jaw like a child’s drawing, which we remark upon only for its suggestion. We love this tiger as the cross of all the other tigers we’ve forced into each other. We’ve bred out rarity for sweetness to soften the cages between us. Our teeth break from such sweetness; the nerves stand like famished guards. Our loss is our keened feeling. We bare it as the new white tiger bares his every minute. When we say the tiger’s condition parallels our own, we say this is something me must love. We say nothing is preternatural, but also the very opposite. We say we are still wild, perhaps wildest. Then we smile and hurt when we face any cool draft. We smile, you, me, the keepers, the zoo-patrons, and our children whose noses flatten against the glass, their teeth sparse and crooked or already under their pillows for the reward of more small change.