Modus vivendi

There is no modus vivendi.
Life is an antelope pursued by a lion.
Unavoidable the jaws that sink
Into the sweet flesh,
Gouge the dappled skin,
Tear the rippling sinews.
Inveterate spasms, muscles that
Writhe and turn with the desperate
Struggle to be free,
Vainly twisting,
Doomed to die,
Consumed in the hot blood that
Pulses over the muscular jaws.

Antonio del Pollaiolo
Etched a stag
That has been torn apart
By the slavering jaws
Of pack dogs:
Intestines festoon the landscape
Billowing guts slide
Around beneath the trees.
Passive desperation is
Writ on the animal's face
As it waits to die;
And the hunters arrive,
Slipping silently through
The dark, anonymous forest.

Curiously arresting it is:
Paolo Uccello's hunt for
A girl's favour, darkened
Into bestiality;
A scene of death made
Ordinary: the lithe quadruped
Messily butchered
In the pristine forest,
The hunter's primal thrill:
Violence to be sanctified
By the need to kill food
Earthly, elemental,
Power-stricken.

There is no modus vivendi:
We are all the hart in the forest.
Dogs and lions, men with steel
Honed to cut and pierce,
They are after our hearts,
Ready to open us and
Let out the steaming life
In one last, elemental,
Dwindling surge.