The Woman at the Washington Zoo

By Randall Jarrell 1914–1965 Randall Jarrell

The saris go by me from the embassies.

Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet.

They look back at the leopard like the leopard.

And I....

this print of mine, that has kept its color

Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null

Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so

To my bed, so to my grave, with no

Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief,

The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief—

Only I complain.... this serviceable

Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses

But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns,

Wavy beneath fountains—small, far-off, shining

In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped

As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap,

Aging, but without knowledge of their age,

Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death—

Oh, bars of my own body, open, open!

The world goes by my cage and never sees me.

And there come not to me, as come to these,

The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas’ grain,

Pigeons settling on the bears’ bread, buzzards

Tearing the meat the flies have clouded....

Vulture,

When you come for the white rat that the foxes left,

Take off the red helmet of your head, the black

Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man:

The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn,

To whose hand of power the great lioness

Stalks, purring....

You know what I was,

You see what I am: change me, change me!

Randall Jarrell, “The Woman at the Washington Zoo” from The Complete Poems. Copyright © 1969, renewed 1997 by Mary von S. Jarrell. Used by permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, LLC, www.fsgbooks.com. All rights reserved. Caution: Users are warned that this work is protected under copyright laws and downloading is strictly prohibited. The right to reproduce or transfer the work via any medium must be secured with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC.

Source: The Complete Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)

Biography

Best known as a literary critic but also respected as a poet, Randall Jarrell was noted for his acerbic, witty, and erudite criticism. In a volume of essays about Jarrell titled Randall Jarrell, 1914-1965, nearly all of the writers praised his critical faculties. They also noted, commented Stephen Spender in the New York Review of Books, "a cruel streak in Jarrell when he attacked poets he didn't like." John Berryman wrote that . . .

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