And With Zebra's Blood...

And with zebra's blood I shall cultivate the world and purge it of its loneliness
With just a spatter of life
Strewn, fresh, uncoagulated
Jagged designs of freed red
Across the vast stripes of white
And lost across the stripes of black
A little gasp
A too-clear shot of a deep black eye encased in soft white skin
Long black eyelashes

And with zebra's blood
Dripping from my hands
My red handprints on either side of his long striped face
His soft black muzzle touching my chest
And his little murmurs

He knows
He knows...
--

I was intrigued one night whilst looking on Google for pictures of an African Sable, a beautiful black species of antelope to draw, when I came across a photograph of a zebra lying in much the same pose as this, from which this drawing is based. I thought it a beautiful picture, but then I noticed the ugly splash of blood, the vacancy of the eyes, and the long black rifle laid across the zebra's flank. My heart sunk.
This creature born of long golden grasses, chants and a medallion sun... Was a trophy. He had his life stolen away, only to have his head mounted on a wall in someone's living room, as proof that they had stolen this piece of beauty from Africa.

I looked at the digital representation of the zebra's eyes. Flat, blank, black. They were once beautiful jade jewels, these eyes, but they had their vigour snatched away.

I wrote this first draft of the poem, which will be revised and made better, and I drew and wrote the zebra alive and without the tool of his destruction by his side.