Requiem for a Tiger

There is no one, really, to mourn her death.
Her eyes, they say, were like a wraith’s
Heavy and sombre, unlike any animal
Something born in blazing fire!
They say, they know, when a tiger is a tiger.

They call themselves all-rational.
That the embodiment of a man-eater

Is an abomination – tag her a murderer!

Unable to kill or secure her meal,

Something that should not exist in real.

To what end is her life, what was her story?

A lifetime spent reckoning deaths – nay, murders

Cast out not by her own kin but human furore

Erased from existence by unsympathetic orders!

They say, they know, when a tiger is a tiger.

There is no one, really, to mourn her death

Yet she lives on under everyone’s breath

Under what name –  scornful or profane

In what story – irrational, of an old witch’s bane

Or tragic, a mother who died without a name.