163 Animal poems

The dog trots freely in the street and sees reality and the things he sees are bigger than himself and the things he sees are his reality Drunks in doorways Moons on trees The dog trots freely thru the street and the things he sees are smaller than himself Fish on newsprint Ants in holes Chickens in Chinatown windows their heads a block away The dog trots freely in the street and the things he smells smell something like himself The dog trots freely in the street past puddles and babies cats and cigars poolrooms and policemen He doesn’t hate cops He merely has no use for them and he goes past them and past the dead cows hung up whole in front of the San Francisco Meat Market He would rather eat a tender cow than a tough policeman though either might do And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory and past Coit’s Tower and past Congressman Doyle He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle although what he hears is very discouraging very depressing very absurd to a sad young dog like himself to a serious dog like himself But he has his own free world to live in His own fleas to eat He will not be muzzled Congressman Doyle is just another fire hydrant to him The dog trots freely in the street and has his own dog’s life to live and to think about and to reflect upon touching and tasting and testing everything investigating everything without benefit of perjury a real realist with a real tale to tell and a real tail to tell it with a real live barking democratic dog engaged in real free enterprise with something to say about ontology something to say about reality and how to see it and how to hear it with his head cocked sideways at streetcorners as if he is just about to have his picture taken for Victor Records listening for His Master’s Voice and looking like a living questionmark into the great gramaphone of puzzling existence with its wondrous hollow horn which always seems just about to spout forth some Victorious answer to everything

The dog Stoltz pushed his paw pads into my neck, the warm, beaten leather deep under my chin, and let slip the one paw to up near my mouth with all the filth of the many blocks we trod, together trod, a well-moistened, adenoidal sound, part sigh and part growl, coming out of him, transported, he seemed, in a slow-motion delirium as I tickled his chest and behind his ear when he just then told me he’d tear out my throat, looked in my eye and smiled, best as a dog can, then turned ruminative and spoke once more: —I simply have to knock off that essay on Sassoon. This would have been Sassoon the war poet, understand. Dogs cannot write. My mother told me this. As for his talk, well, I took no special notice. His love of the war poets was well known. Stoltz would have been part bull and something else. Two friends walked by just then, handily as these things go, and inquired of us sitting down there on the stoop, not even, a doorway merely, along a busy street, how went the day and what pursuits was I attending; but what interested the two of them most were the tergiversations of the dog Stoltz, first beast, then scholar, then abject and adored. (Say, who among us does not care to be undressed?) He was not really my dog, you see, and of this made note, but were glad as well at my having a new dog in my life. It was a busy stretch of pavement, Amsterdam maybe, or Broadway, or farther down just south of Chelsea. I can tell you it was the West Side, of that I’m certain, and it was mild, spring-like, a few drops in the air. The friends passed along and the dog Stoltz slept. He was not my dog, you know. He simply followed me out of what can only have been a very fine home, such were his graces, his recondite tastes. But he was a killer too, and rather smelled. I cannot accommodate another animal now, please understand. I am between places. I will yearn for Stoltz, but no.

Dogs are Shakespearean, children are strangers. Let Freud and Wordsworth discuss the child, Angels and Platonists shall judge the dog, The running dog, who paused, distending nostrils, Then barked and wailed; the boy who pinched his sister, The little girl who sang the song from Twelfth Night, As if she understood the wind and rain, The dog who moaned, hearing the violins in concert. —O I am sad when I see dogs or children! For they are strangers, they are Shakespearean. Tell us, Freud, can it be that lovely children Have merely ugly dreams of natural functions? And you, too, Wordsworth, are children truly Clouded with glory, learned in dark Nature? The dog in humble inquiry along the ground, The child who credits dreams and fears the dark, Know more and less than you: they know full well Nor dream nor childhood answer questions well: You too are strangers, children are Shakespearean. Regard the child, regard the animal, Welcome strangers, but study daily things, Knowing that heaven and hell surround us, But this, this which we say before we’re sorry, This which we live behind our unseen faces, Is neither dream, nor childhood, neither Myth, nor landscape, final, nor finished, For we are incomplete and know no future, And we are howling or dancing out our souls In beating syllables before the curtain: We are Shakespearean, we are strangers.

Lie down—lie down!—my noble hound, That joyful bark give o’er; It wakes the lonely echoes round, But rouses me no more— Thy lifted ears, thy swelling chest, Thy eyes so keenly bright, No longer kindle in my breast The thrill of fierce delight; When following thee on foaming steed My eager soul outstripped thy speed— Lie down—lie down—my faithful hound! And watch this night by me, For thee again the horn shall sound By mountain, stream, and tree; And thou along the forest glade, Shall track the flying deer When cold and silent, I am laid In chill oblivion here. Another voice shall cheer thee on, And glory when the chase is won. Lie down—lie down!—my gallant hound! Thy master’s life is sped; Go—couch thee on the dewy ground— ’Tis thine to watch the dead. But when the blush of early day Is kindling up the sky, Then speed thee, faithful friend, away, And to thy mistress hie; And guide her to this lonely spot, Though my closed eyes behold her not— Lie down—lie down!—my trusty hound! Death comes, and we must part— In my dull ear strange murmurs sound— More faintly throbs my heart; The many twinkling lights of heaven Scarce glimmer in the blue— Chill round me falls the breath of even, Cold on my brow the dew; Earth, stars, and heavens, are lost to sight— The chase is o’er!—brave friend, good night!—

Reading in bed, full of sentiment for the mild evening and the children asleep in adjacent rooms, hearing them cry out now and then the brief reports of sufficient imagination, and listening at the same time compassionately to the scrabble of claws, the fast treble in the chimney— then it was out, not a trapped bird beating at the seams of the ceiling, but a bat lifting toward us, falling away. Dominion over every living thing, large brain, a choice of weapons—

In that country the animals have the faces of people: the ceremonial cats possessing the streets the fox run politely to earth, the huntsmen standing around him, fixed in their tapestry of manners the bull, embroidered with blood and given an elegant death, trumpets, his name stamped on him, heraldic brand because (when he rolled on the sand, sword in his heart, the teeth in his blue mouth were human) he is really a man even the wolves, holding resonant conversations in their forests thickened with legend. In this country the animals have the faces of animals. Their eyes flash once in car headlights and are gone. Their deaths are not elegant. They have the faces of no-one.

The turtle carries his house on his back. He is both the house and the person of that house. But actually, under the shell is a little room where the true turtle, wearing long underwear, sits at a little table. At one end of the room a series of levers sticks out of slots in the floor, like the controls of a steam shovel. It is with these that the turtle controls the legs of his house. Most of the time the turtle sits under the sloping ceiling of his turtle room reading catalogues at the little table where a candle burns. He leans on one elbow, and then the other. He crosses one leg, and then the other. Finally he yawns and buries his head in his arms and sleeps. If he feels a child picking up his house he quickly douses the candle and runs to the control levers and activates the legs of his house and tries to escape. If he cannot escape he retracts the legs and withdraws the so-called head and waits. He knows that children are careless, and that there will come a time when he will be free to move his house to some secluded place, where he will relight his candle, take out his catalogues and read until at last he yawns. Then he’ll bury his head in his arms and sleep....That is, until another child picks up his house....

When trying to catch a horse it helps if you look away. Eye contact just pisses them off. But you can’t fake looking away, horses know when you are doing this. You have to really look away. Some horsemen never come out of  this.

Mickey my cat is so sweet Mickey my cat waits patienly Mickey my cat always ready to be hugged... when he decides it

She does this thing. Our seventeen- year-old dog. Our mostly deaf dog. Our mostly dead dog, statistically speaking. When I crouch. When I put my mouth to her ear and shout her name. She walks away. Walks toward the nothing of speech. She even trots down the drive, ears up, as if my voice is coming home. It’s like watching a child believe in Christmas, right before you burn the tree down. Every time I do it, I think, this time she’ll turn to me. This time she’ll put voice to face. This time, I’ll be absolved of decay. Which is like being a child who believes in Christmas as the tree burns, as the drapes catch, as Santa lights a smoke with his blowtorch and asks, want one?