Bajo la luna
el tigre de oro y sombras
mira sus garras.
No sabe que en el alba
han destrozado un hombre.

~Tigres de Oro by Jorge Luis Borges

Under the moon
the tiger of gold and shadows
looks at his claws.
It doesn’t know that in the dawn
a man was destroyed.

~Translation by Manuel Kei in his article Tanka & Duende.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/6LsMoUtBlDk" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

I found this short film by Guilherme Marcondes on Neil Gaiman’s journal. Using the cityscape of Sao Paulo for it’s background, it is full of inspirational contrasts, light and dark, wonder and terror, the destructive and the transformative, the city and the jungle… all bound up with a wonderful soundtrack. There’s a better quality video and more information about it up here: Tyger

And here’s the poem that inspired it, in all its magnificent spell-like intensity:

TYGER, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder and what art
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? What dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And water’d heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the lamb make thee?

Tyger, tyger, burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

~The Tyger by William Blake