jorge luis borges, "to a cat"

Mirrors are not more silent
nor the creeping dawn more secretive;
in the moonlight, you are that panther
we catch sight of from afar. . .

I often think Borges loved cats for their sheer surrealist otherness - beautiful, with a perfect law known only to themselves.

. . . You have accepted,
since that long forgotten past,
the love of the distrustful hand. . .

Think those bits are lyrical? I wish I could read the original Spanish, in which the first four lines run:

No son más silenciosos los espejos
ni más furtiva el alba aventurera;
eres, bajo la luna,
esa pantera que nos es dado divisar de lejos. . .

Entire poem here. Original Spanish and another quite nice turn at translation here. The poem was first published in El oro de los tigres (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972) and in a 1977 translation by Alastair Reid in The Gold of the Tigers.