The Wolf and the Donkey: Love’s instinct

But the little wolf didn’t know

that the world is not loving care,

that all around

raged the conflict of the worlds,

that the caresses will die,

they will hide despairingly

in the deepest folds

of the guileless soul,

‘…’

There is the little wolf,

cast down like remains of life

in the wretched wire-netted corner,

a sad proof

of the dream of human power.

‘…’

And the harassed donkey,

with years of labour

gathered on its back,

with the marks of the common fate of the beings

on its shaking legs

and a gaze wearied by the world

was thrown

into the miserable corner

to be food for the wolf,

so that the miracle of new life

devises death

in an eternal contradiction.

‘…’

But the little wolf,

uprooted,

who knows

neither the wiles of the wood

nor the ways of man,

untouched

by either need or desire,

at the sight of the other

- calm and without guile -

had a recollection

of distant loving care

which like an unseen touch of a bird’s feather

revealed to it

the depth of existence’s first beginning,

that sweetened for it the start of life

in this grim world.

‘…’

And they were ended by the hand of those

who through the lonely roads

of the world of man

advanced,

to honour that forgotten dignity,

common to the beings,

throwing down castles

of presumptuousness and violence of so many years. …’

From the poem ‘The Wolf and the Donkey: Love’s instinct’, by Ioanna Moutsopoulou

Cycle III: Faces of Life

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(Photograph by Yiannis Zisis)