cryptorchid cat

the familiar ones
those who once looked upon me with some depth of knowing
have departed
and in the place they once dwelled
a foundling
strange and restless and wild
who looks upon me with no particular hint of recognition or affinity
i try to understand his wild cries and savage teeth
there is some secret
some mystery in him
but i am lost in a dream
lost in the darkness of my own ignorance
and at times
lost too
in the spots and stripes adorning this small, wild creature
like borges's tzinacan
trapped in a stone prison with the jaguar
trying to decipher the script of qaholom in the great cat's spots
perhaps one day
i too
shall wake in a blaze of light
knowing

*cryptorchid:  an animal or human in which the testes fail to descend into the scrotum

* the writing of the god aka the god's script by jorge luis borges plot summary from wikipedia
   (i highly recommend the translation by  l.a. murillo in labyrinths):

The story is narrated by an Aztec priest named Tzinacán, who is tortured by Pedro de Alvarado (who burned the pyramid Qaholom where the protagonist was a magician) and incarcerated, with a jaguar in the adjacent cell. Tzinacán searches for a divine script that will provide him omnipotence in the patterns of the animal's fur. While in the process of doing so, he has a dream in which he imagines himself drowning in sand, and awakes to a vision of an enormous wheel "made of water, but also of fire," which allows him to understand the patterns in the jaguar's fur. Tzinacán claims that the divine script is a formula of fourteen "apparently random" words, which upon speaking, will make his prison disappear and will set the jaguar upon Alvarado. The story ends with the narrator deciding not to say the words, however, because knowing the words has made him forget Tzinacán, whom he is content to let lie in prison.