Selima Hill: Visiting the Zoo

The tall giraffes can never sit.

Their names are Valerie and Gwendoline.

I am their tall reticulated son.

This is our sand and hay.

Follow our gold strip to holy Tassili,

blonde swallow-tails, hares, a little milk.

You are a good girl. He will never know

you are in love with someone else, not him.

From My Darling Camel (1988). Tassili is the site in the Algerian desert with an abundance of prehistoric rock-paintings, including of giraffes. Rather than break the code of this poem, that gives its half-perceived mysteries another dimension of deep time.