It does not exist but existed and only it knows it still exists:
for its powerful framework of eye teeth and vertebrae
any other detail but the curve
of its huge back happens to be irrelevant.
In its clear conscience watching with yellow eyes
the plain is an only eternity
and man another animal and not the best of the moor.
The tiger's heavy grandfather, it hides
in the step that hides and pretends to be something else,
the rolling of a bough, a careless scraping
of the wind on the naked surface:
all step by step knows it to be
what prints those signs
and as regards all, that contact is enough .
Maybe its sturdy stalking
has refined its tactics and arrived
at the top of the waiting in an unknown feline scale.
A patient spring waiting for a million years
for us to cross the sign: our ignorance confirms
that no grace should be granted us.
At a time in several places,
like of yore and always,
(so was believed and is believed by our superstitious notion of things)
is this signal on the floor and also and better
that sturdy shadow that out of itself
builds a hill where the end of our life awaits,
death's pet, certain and brawny.