Wittgenstein . . . made the most interesting
mistake about animals I have ever come across.
At the end of the Philosophical Investigations he
says that if a lion could talk we wouldn’t be able
to understand him.

                                                —Vicki Hearne

If some lion were to speak
(to say nothing of lions at large)
that one would be a failed beast
thin-maned and ugly, lacking among its kind
any familial tie to the king of same.

A hearer of voices, that
one would scheme of poetry—
in the desert would invent
riddles that slouched like athletes
thick muscled, gigantic.

Of course, the lionist culture would fail
its pretensions exposed by a skinny Algerian.
A postcard mailed from a desert town
requesting copyright, would be returned
because it arrived without a stamp

but think of the romp they would have.

Lionish translations would burgeon—
Imagine the Nicomachean Ethics roared
the Iliad’s great periods hugely purred
the New Testament conceived
as an antelope hunt.

Soon would arise a tradition
of lionist conversation, courtesy having
its Leoniglione, politics its Leonavelli
verse a Leonighieri, a dolce stile
a sprezzatura of the leonine.

In the new lionist Aeneid
the hero remains in Carthage
to wed the African queen.
Having conquered the interior
the lovers found instead of Rome
a belletrist academy

teaching all subsequent history
to keep a civil tongue.