163 Animal poems

The warping night air having brought the boom Of an owl’s voice into her darkened room, We tell the wakened child that all she heard Was an odd question from a forest bird, Asking of us, if rightly listened to, “Who cooks for you?” and then “Who cooks for you?” Words, which can make our terrors bravely clear, Can also thus domesticate a fear, And send a small child back to sleep at night Not listening for the sound of stealthy flight Or dreaming of some small thing in a claw Borne up to some dark branch and eaten raw.

At evening, sitting on this terrace, When the sun from the west, beyond Pisa, beyond the mountains of Carrara Departs, and the world is taken by surprise ... When the tired flower of Florence is in gloom beneath the glowing Brown hills surrounding ... When under the arches of the Ponte Vecchio A green light enters against stream, flush from the west, Against the current of obscure Arno ... Look up, and you see things flying Between the day and the night; Swallows with spools of dark thread sewing the shadows together. A circle swoop, and a quick parabola under the bridge arches Where light pushes through; A sudden turning upon itself of a thing in the air. A dip to the water. And you think: "The swallows are flying so late!" Swallows? Dark air-life looping Yet missing the pure loop ... A twitch, a twitter, an elastic shudder in flight And serrated wings against the sky, Like a glove, a black glove thrown up at the light, And falling back. Never swallows! Bats! The swallows are gone. At a wavering instant the swallows gave way to bats By the Ponte Vecchio ... Changing guard. Bats, and an uneasy creeping in one's scalp As the bats swoop overhead! Flying madly. Pipistrello! Black piper on an infinitesimal pipe. Little lumps that fly in air and have voices indefinite, wildly vindictive; Wings like bits of umbrella. Bats! Creatures that hang themselves up like an old rag, to sleep; And disgustingly upside down. Hanging upside down like rows of disgusting old rags And grinning in their sleep. Bats! In China the bat is symbol for happiness. Not for me!

Quickly and quietly, the bat patrols the night, sending an invisible song echoing like ripples on a pond, chasing moths around a streetlight. Quickly and quietly, the bat patrols the night.

They billow from a hillside in Cha’am. Together, they are more than plural: the planet’s darkest song, a tongue, a serpent muscling air apart, a dire banner come unfurled, a river flowing wholly from the old, mute mountain’s desperate heart, the last confession of the world. Conceive of each one singly, if you can.

She looks for wiggly fishes, At least so it appears, To stuff inside the suitcase That's swinging from her ears. And though she's very graceful When flying round and round, How does she get that faceful Of luggage off the ground?

it lyked to eat salmon w/ its fingers like a bear and then use those fingers to clean its glasses it cried and it looked like a raccoon   I believe it wanted to cultivate this look

A wild-bear chace, didst never see? Then hast thou lived in vain. Thy richest bump of glorious glee, Lies desert in thy brain. When first my father settled here, ’Twas then the frontier line: The panther’s scream, filled night with fear And bears preyed on the swine. But woe for Bruin’s short lived fun, When rose the squealing cry; Now man and horse, with dog and gun, For vengeance, at him fly. A sound of danger strikes his ear; He gives the breeze a snuff; Away he bounds, with little fear, And seeks the tangled rough . On press his foes, and reach the ground, Where’s left his half munched meal; The dogs, in circles, scent around, And find his fresh made trail. With instant cry, away they dash, And men as fast pursue; O’er logs they leap, through water splash, And shout the brisk halloo. Now to elude the eager pack, Bear shuns the open ground; Through matted vines, he shapes his track And runs it, round and round. The tall fleet cur, with deep-mouthed voice, Now speeds him, as the wind; While half-grown pup, and short-legged fice, Are yelping far behind. And fresh recruits are dropping in To join the merry corps : With yelp and yell,—a mingled din— The woods are in a roar. And round, and round the chace now goes, The world’s alive with fun; Nick Carter’s horse, his rider throws, And more, Hill drops his gun. Now sorely pressed, bear glances back, And lolls his tired tongue; When as, to force him from his track, An ambush on him sprung. Across the glade he sweeps for flight, And fully is in view. The dogs, new-fired, by the sight, Their cry, and speed, renew. The foremost ones, now reach his rear, He turns, they dash away; And circling now, the wrathful bear, They have him full at bay. At top of speed, the horse-men come, All screaming in a row, “Whoop! Take him Tiger. Seize him Drum.” Bang,—bang—the rifles go. And furious now, the dogs he tears, And crushes in his ire, Wheels right and left, and upward rears, With eyes of burning fire. But leaden death is at his heart, Vain all the strength he plies. And, spouting blood from every part, He reels, and sinks, and dies. And now a dinsome clamor rose, ’Bout who should have his skin; Who first draws blood, each hunter knows, This prize must always win. But who did this, and how to trace What’s true from what’s a lie, Like lawyers, in a murder case They stoutly argufy . Aforesaid fice, of blustering mood, Behind, and quite forgot, Just now emerging from the wood, Arrives upon the spot. With grinning teeth, and up-turned hair— Brim full of spunk and wrath, He growls, and seizes on dead bear, And shakes for life and death. And swells as if his skin would tear, And growls and shakes again; And swears, as plain as dog can swear, That he has won the skin. Conceited whelp! we laugh at thee— Nor mind, that now a few Of pompous, two-legged dogs there be, Conceited quite as you.

Tonight the bear comes to the orchard and, balancing on her hind legs, dances under the apple trees, hanging onto their boughs, dragging their branches down to earth. Look again. It is not the bear but some afterimage of her like the car I once saw in the driveway after the last guest had gone. Snow pulls the apple boughs to the ground. Whatever moves in the orchard— heavy, lumbering—is clear as wind. The bear is long gone. Drunk on apples, she banged over the trash cans that fall night, then skidded downstream. By now she must be logged in for the winter. Unless she is choosy. I imagine her as very choosy, sniffing at the huge logs, pawing them, trying each one on for size, but always coming out again. Until tonight. Tonight sap freezes under her skin. Her breath leaves white apples in the air. As she walks she dozes, listening to the sound of axes chopping wood. Somewhere she can never catch up to trees are falling. Chips pile up like snow When she does find it finally, the log draws her in as easily as a forest, and for a while she continues to see, just ahead of her, the moon trapped like a salmon in the ice.

1 In late winter I sometimes glimpse bits of steam coming up from some fault in the old snow and bend close and see it is lung-colored and put down my nose and know the chilly, enduring odor of bear. 2 I take a wolf’s rib and whittle it sharp at both ends and coil it up and freeze it in blubber and place it out on the fairway of the bears. And when it has vanished I move out on the bear tracks, roaming in circles until I come to the first, tentative, dark splash on the earth. And I set out running, following the splashes of blood wandering over the world. At the cut, gashed resting places I stop and rest, at the crawl-marks where he lay out on his belly to overpass some stretch of bauchy ice I lie out dragging myself forward with bear-knives in my fists. 3 On the third day I begin to starve, at nightfall I bend down as I knew I would at a turd sopped in blood, and hesitate, and pick it up, and thrust it in my mouth, and gnash it down, and rise and go on running. 4 On the seventh day, living by now on bear blood alone, I can see his upturned carcass far out ahead, a scraggled, steamy hulk, the heavy fur riffling in the wind. I come up to him and stare at the narrow-spaced, petty eyes, the dismayed face laid back on the shoulder, the nostrils flared, catching perhaps the first taint of me as he died. I hack a ravine in his thigh, and eat and drink, and tear him down his whole length and open him and climb in and close him up after me, against the wind, and sleep. 5 And dream of lumbering flatfooted over the tundra, stabbed twice from within, splattering a trail behind me, splattering it out no matter which way I lurch, no matter which parabola of bear-transcendence, which dance of solitude I attempt, which gravity-clutched leap, which trudge, which groan. 6 Until one day I totter and fall— fall on this stomach that has tried so hard to keep up, to digest the blood as it leaked in, to break up and digest the bone itself: and now the breeze blows over me, blows off the hideous belches of ill-digested bear blood and rotted stomach and the ordinary, wretched odor of bear, blows across my sore, lolled tongue a song or screech, until I think I must rise up and dance. And I lie still. 7 I awaken I think. Marshlights reappear, geese come trailing again up the flyway. In her ravine under old snow the dam-bear lies, licking lumps of smeared fur and drizzly eyes into shapes with her tongue. And one hairy-soled trudge stuck out before me, the next groaned out, the next, the next, the rest of my days I spend wandering: wondering what, anyway, was that sticky infusion, that rank flavor of blood, that poetry, by which I lived?

Fear. Three bears are not fear, mother and cubs come berrying in our neighborhood like any other family. I want to see them, or any distraction. Flashlight poking across the brook into briary darkness, but they have gone, noisily. I go to bed. Fear. Unwritten books already titled. Some idiot will shoot the bears soon, it always happens, they’ll be strung up by the paws in someone’s frontyard maple to be admired and measured, and I'll be paid for work yet to be done— with a broken imagination. At last I dream. Our plum tree, little, black, twisted, gaunt in the orchard: how for a moment last spring it flowered serenely, translucently before yielding its usual summer crop of withered leaves. I waken, late, go to the window, look down to the orchard. Is middle age what makes even dreams factual? The plum is serene and bright in new moonlight, dressed in silver leaves, and nearby, in the waste of rough grass strewn in moonlight like diamond dust, what is it?—a dark shape moves, and then another. Are they ... I can’t be sure. The dark house nuzzles my knee mutely, pleading for meaty dollars. Fear. Wouldn’t it be great to write nothing at all except poems about bears?