To a West Indian Alligator
(Estimated age, 1957 years)[2]
Eunice Tietjens
Greetings, my brother, strange and uncouth beast,
Flat-bellied, wrinkled, broad of nose!
You are not beautiful—and yet at least
Contentment spreads your scaley toes.
The keeper thwacks you and you grunt at me,
Two hundred pounds of sleepy spleen.
He tells me that your cranial cavity