The apes yawn and adore their fleas in the sun.
The parrots shriek as if they were on fire, or strut
Like cheap tarts to attract the stroller with the nut.
Fatigued with indolence, tiger and lion
Lie still as the sun. The boa-constrictor's coil
Is a fossil. Cage after cage seems empty, or
Stinks of sleepers from the breathing straw.
It might be painted on a nursery wall.
But who runs like the rest past these arrives
At a cage where the crowd stands, stares, mesmerized,
As a child at a dream, at a jaguar hurrying enraged
The zoo seem static like a painting.  Ironically, the animals' suffering is denied by the presentation of the place as fit to be a design for a child’s nursery. The ferocity and violence of the natural world has been sanitised, its animals are subdued by their lives in the zoo. 

The Jaguar