Last Days of the Tiger

There are three of the fattest men I’ve seen for a while,

all equivalently shaped,

like terrestrial globes balanced on toothpicks,

and all avid for food,

so that they cannot wait

but keep badgering at the staff—

and all seemingly unrelated to each other too.

It appears there is a Christmas party on somewhere down the back

and these are patris familiae—

one sitting with his children, who are slim,

and give the impression of being mute with shame

as he visits with butterfly hands

the various dishes spread across the table.

There are other types as well,

an unusual mix of all the classes,

the lowest

with the unforgiving, feral look

of those whose time has come at last

en-masse

but as yet are only dimly conscious of it

(Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! barked the little dog)

otherwise they would be even more contemptuously predatory

in their glance

than at this moment they already seem to be.

As for the rest, it has all become so second nature to them,

dining out of a Sunday evening

in the two-star hotel

of a one-horse town,

and fed up by the fact, in both its meanings.

2008