Transcript

I’m Ada Limón and this is The Slowdown.

One of the wonders that never cease for me is the wonder of the animals. I can stare at my dog’s little paws that somehow always smell like Fritos and be amazed that she exists. That she has evolved. She’s a pug and we often tell her that there’s no way she evolved from wolves. Most likely she evolved from some magical otherworldly being made for attitude and snuggling.

I remember as a kid, my older brother and I would watch Marty Stouffer’s Wild America on TV. Glued to one of the only channels we got back then, PBS, Channel 9 in Northern California. I loved watching the little animals, the frogs, the salamanders, the underneath things. Then of course the hawks in flight, the slow motion power when they took off from a branch, the alligator swimming in the lagoon. Everything was bizarre. Everything was wonderful.

But there was something special about the episodes that featured the big cats. The speed of a cheetah — the fastest land animal, capable of speeds up to 70 miles per hour. The saunter of a lion with its enormous paws. The panther. The mountain lion. Oh the cats. That was where it was at for us. We’d watch an episode and stare at our small cat Smoke, waiting for some semblance of her lion and tiger genetics to come through. We wanted to watch her leap to see if she was just as wild as a big cat on Wild America.

In today’s much beloved poem by William Blake, published in 1794, we see the wonder of the animal. What sort of creator would have dreamed up the tiger? The questions at the core of this poem have always struck me as questions of balance. If the universe can hold the innocent lamb, it must also hold the fearsome tiger.

The Tyger
by William Blake

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright, 
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye 
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies 
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain? 
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp? 

When the stars threw down their spears, 
And water'd heaven with their tears, 
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?