And I shall search my soul,
I shall search my very soul,
For the lion,
For the lion,
For the lion,
For the lion inside me.

I was born from the loins of a lion, an African trailblazer who blazed the trail for me to follow. Cut in his prime when I was just a child but his legacy lives in me.

I am a caged lion living like a free-range lamb.

"A work in progress quickly becomes feral. It reverts to a wild state overnight. It is barely domesticated, a mustang on which you one day fastened a halter, but which now you cannot catch. It is a lion you cage in your study. As the work grows, it gets harder to control; it is a lion growing in strength. You must visit it every day and reassert your mastery over it. If you skip a day, you are, quite rightly, afraid to open the door to its room. You enter its room with bravura, holding a chair at the thing and shouting, "Simba!

I have the heart of a lion, and the circulatory system of a lamb.

(Writing motto:) "You'll never know what happened in the hunt until the lion's story."

I have to say that what I know I know through making poems.

the lion sleeps in the sun.
its nose on its paws.
it can kill a man.

You are the poet, you walk inside my dreams...

When I was a lion, panther was my prey;
I caught everything which I hunted.
When I came to embrace tightly love for you,
A lame fox drove me from den.

Live with your head in the lion’s mouth.

I am aware of being in a beautiful prison, from which I can only escape by writing.

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
That the deity that kills for pleasure will also
heal,
That in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion will pick your soul
up gently
by the nape of the neck,
And caress you into darkness and paradise.

~ Ruth Zardo, poet and character in All The Devils Are Here

I just sit where I'm put, composed
of stone and wishful thinking:
that the deity who kills for pleasure
will also heal,
that in the midst of your nightmare,
the final one, a kind lion
will come with bandages in her mouth
and the soft body of a woman,
and lick you clean of fever,
and pick your soul up gently by the nape of the neck
and caress you into darkness and paradise.