163 Animal poems

I Stately, kindly, lordly friend, Condescend Here to sit by me, and turn Glorious eyes that smile and burn, Golden eyes, love's lustrous meed, On the golden page I read. All your wondrous wealth of hair, Dark and fair, Silken-shaggy, soft and bright As the clouds and beams of night, Pays my reverent hand's caress Back with friendlier gentleness. Dogs may fawn on all and some As they come; You, a friend of loftier mind, Answer friends alone in kind. Just your foot upon my hand Softly bids it understand. Morning round this silent sweet Garden-seat Sheds its wealth of gathering light, Thrills the gradual clouds with might, Changes woodland, orchard, heath, Lawn, and garden there beneath. Fair and dim they gleamed below: Now they glow Deep as even your sunbright eyes, Fair as even the wakening skies. Can it not or can it be Now that you give thanks to see? May not you rejoice as I, Seeing the sky Change to heaven revealed, and bid Earth reveal the heaven it hid All night long from stars and moon, Now the sun sets all in tune? What within you wakes with day Who can say? All too little may we tell, Friends who like each other well, What might haply, if we might, Bid us read our lives aright. II Wild on woodland ways your sires Flashed like fires: Fair as flame and fierce and fleet As with wings on wingless feet Shone and sprang your mother, free, Bright and brave as wind or sea. Free and proud and glad as they, Here to-day Rests or roams their radiant child, Vanquished not, but reconciled, Free from curb of aught above Save the lovely curb of love. Love through dreams of souls divine Fain would shine Round a dawn whose light and song Then should right our mutual wrong — Speak, and seal the love-lit law Sweet Assisi's seer foresaw. Dreams were theirs; yet haply may Dawn a day When such friends and fellows born, Seeing our earth as fair at morn, May for wiser love's sake see More of heaven's deep heart than we.

LOVING friend, the gift of one, Who, her own true faith, hath run, Through thy lower nature ; Be my benediction said With my hand upon thy head, Gentle fellow-creature ! Like a lady's ringlets brown, Flow thy silken ears adown Either side demurely, Of thy silver-suited breast Shining out from all the rest Of thy body purely. Darkly brown thy body is, Till the sunshine, striking this, Alchemize its dulness, — When the sleek curls manifold Flash all over into gold, With a burnished fulness. Underneath my stroking hand, Startled eyes of hazel bland Kindling, growing larger, — Up thou leapest with a spring, Full of prank and curvetting, Leaping like a charger. Leap ! thy broad tail waves a light ; Leap ! thy slender feet are bright, Canopied in fringes. Leap — those tasselled ears of thine Flicker strangely, fair and fine, Down their golden inches Yet, my pretty sportive friend, Little is 't to such an end That I praise thy rareness ! Other dogs may be thy peers Haply in these drooping ears, And this glossy fairness. But of thee it shall be said, This dog watched beside a bed Day and night unweary, — Watched within a curtained room, Where no sunbeam brake the gloom Round the sick and dreary. Roses, gathered for a vase, In that chamber died apace, Beam and breeze resigning — This dog only, waited on, Knowing that when light is gone, Love remains for shining. Other dogs in thymy dew Tracked the hares and followed through Sunny moor or meadow — This dog only, crept and crept Next a languid cheek that slept, Sharing in the shadow. Other dogs of loyal cheer Bounded at the whistle clear, Up the woodside hieing — This dog only, watched in reach Of a faintly uttered speech, Or a louder sighing. And if one or two quick tears Dropped upon his glossy ears, Or a sigh came double, — Up he sprang in eager haste, Fawning, fondling, breathing fast, In a tender trouble. And this dog was satisfied, If a pale thin hand would glide, Down his dewlaps sloping, — Which he pushed his nose within, After, — platforming his chin On the palm left open. This dog, if a friendly voice Call him now to blyther choice Than such chamber-keeping, Come out ! ' praying from the door, — Presseth backward as before, Up against me leaping. Therefore to this dog will I, Tenderly not scornfully, Render praise and favour ! With my hand upon his head, Is my benediction said Therefore, and for ever. And because he loves me so, Better than his kind will do Often, man or woman, Give I back more love again Than dogs often take of men, — Leaning from my Human. Blessings on thee, dog of mine, Pretty collars make thee fine, Sugared milk make fat thee ! Pleasures wag on in thy tail — Hands of gentle motion fail Nevermore, to pat thee ! Downy pillow take thy head, Silken coverlid bestead, Sunshine help thy sleeping ! No fly 's buzzing wake thee up — No man break thy purple cup, Set for drinking deep in. Whiskered cats arointed flee — Sturdy stoppers keep from thee Cologne distillations ; Nuts lie in thy path for stones, And thy feast-day macaroons Turn to daily rations ! Mock I thee, in wishing weal ? — Tears are in my eyes to feel Thou art made so straightly, Blessing needs must straighten too, — Little canst thou joy or do, Thou who lovest greatly. Yet be blessed to the height Of all good and all delight Pervious to thy nature, — Only loved beyond that line, With a love that answers thine, Loving fellow-creature !

which he must cross, by swimming, for fruits and nuts, to help him I sit with my rifle on a platform high in a tree, same side of the river as the hungry monkey. How does this assist him? When he swims for it I look first upriver: predators move faster with the current than against it. If a crocodile is aimed from upriver to eat the monkey and an anaconda from downriver burns with the same ambition, I do the math, algebra, angles, rate-of-monkey, croc- and snake-speed, and if,if it looks as though the anaconda or the croc will reach the monkey before he attains the river’s far bank, I raise my rifle and fire one, two, three, even four times into the river just behind the monkey to hurry him up a little. Shoot the snake, the crocodile? They’re just doing their jobs, but the monkey, the monkey has little hands like a child’s, and the smart ones, in a cage, can be taught to smile.

Into the changes of autumn brush the doe walked, and the hide, head, and ears were the tinsel browns. They made her. I could not see her. She reappeared, stuffed with apples, and I shot her. Into the pines she ran, and I ran after. I might have lost her, seeing no sign of blood or scuffle, but felt myself part of the woods, a woman with a doe’s ears, and heard her dying, counted her last breaths like a song of dying, and found her dying. I shot her again because her lungs rattled like castanets, then poked her with the gun barrel because her eyes were dusty and unreal. I opened her belly and pushed the insides like rotted fruit into a rabbit hole, skinned her, broke her leg joints under my knee, took the meat, smelled the half-digested smell that was herself. Ah, I closed her eyes. I left her refolded in some briars with the last sun on her head like a benediction, head tilted on its axis of neck and barren bone; head bent wordless over a death, though I heard the night wind blowing through her fur, heard riot in the emptied head.

I spy his head above the waves, big as a man’s fist, black eyes peering at me, until he dives into darker, deeper water. Yesterday I saw him a foot from my outstretched hand, already tilting his great domed shell away. Ribbons of green moss rippled behind him, growing along the ridge of his back and down his long reptilian tail. He swims in everything he knows, and what he knows is never forgotten. Wisely, he fears me as if I were the Plague, which I am, sick unto death, swimming to heal myself in his primeval sea.

“Gwawnowwdat,” said Turnbull, “and take a good look at the pain in a horse’s eyes. If you’d a pair of dragging hooves on you, it’s short work they’d make of the smile on your face.” You could see that he understood, and his fellow-feeling for the pain in the horse’s eyes; and that dwelling on it so long he’d finally stolen into the innermost space of   the horse’s pain that I saw, too, trying to plumb the depths of  pain that it felt; until it was Turnbull’s eyes I saw starting out from that suffering horse’s pelt. I looked at Turnbull and saw set under his brow as I looked him up and down twice the two, too-big eyes that were speechless with sorrow: the horse’s eyes. Translated from the Irish

My fingertips marveled at the silvery shimmer, already less silver, less shimmery than when it lived. I never again should cause flesh this beautiful to be less beautiful, I thought. At supper —swordfish—my brother offered up his neighbor for conversation. He'd shotgunned every TV in his house, even the puny black-and-white on the kitchen counter. Buckshot shattered black granite and splintered yards of Golden Oak. It wasn't election time or football season. Maybe his kids had watched Debbie do Dallas. In the unexpected hush as we considered slaughtered appliances, my brother's drinking buddy told my girlfriend she was a pretty lady, a real pretty lady. She looked like a dream. One day she'd make a real man really happy. I barked three hard flat laughs. The lit friend winced as each blast turned his cheeks a richer red. My girlfriend closed her eyes and opened them, her azure eyelids shimmering with jade.

My damn cat brings me a dead songbird, wren or finch, I don’t know what it is— I mistook at first its folded grey for a strangely shaped piece of lint in the cubicle beneath my desk—nor which cat for I have two: Cricket with her dense body and stubby legs who jumps down from every shelf so reverberatingly, I call her the Black Bomb, or Ingrid, the quiet Russian Blue, whom I call Gritty because her coat is stealthy with dust. They’re always leaving me offerings—the mouse upon the threshold when I return from some trip, the redheaded grosbeak on the sill— but death is different in the front yard or even on the threshold, than Death on a particular morning, crawling into the house, carrying a warm form frozen in its warm mouth, tongue and tooth salivating a fluff of warble and whistle into a smoothly folded, iced, silenced thing, Death triumphant,affectionate! as if anyone would be happy feeding upon dead songs torn from the air.

I’m proud that I fed my avocado to the mice this week To see that scattered dust around the hole I felt dis- appointed the apple had been spared the throbbing soup, home he said it’s a storm it’s a storm I thought am I allowed to ask entire questions to take this space alone you bobbing you painted in my dog’s face so care- fully some kind of violence stretches the thought so long and allows the horns of words to touch each other. I think of him taking this much space. you don’t know about this dish towel for that matter who was I in another time giving the tails so much puzzled that these spices went someplace else they did today in a sandwich the empty hall into which I am reading the empty country an entire country I wanted all of them how I would like just one to pick things up in its cities and its rain its coast the outer coat 78 rpm silly news- papers turning cat on a porch and other countries nearby & home ready for me when I have something to say or show if ever my empty mistakes my empty vase my empty powers of horror my empty sex o bring the snow that rat’s death killed me because i would see it for days over and over and it hardly could be the same rat whose insides whisked the street we don’t think that war is such an incredible mess but it was just yesterday and in ancient poems years ago in the past dying the balloon just bursts it cannot bring u back again the huge cool breath the lake doesn’t want you anymore or her arms her sweet muff or breast the storm the past. but no I won’t leave my cheese out for them anymore and I must be the last person in the world in new york to read him who told us about mice that sing & fill empty auditoriums like us and our singing hearts our formula for bringing it out. Pulling the receptacle apart watch the tiny ship floating on it smithereens I ducked the tail edging over taking a little bit more. The price of wider concepts is not choosing your drops oh flicking me off reminding me of you everyone yell at once Two Rabbit legs jutting out I keep my childhood around almost more than every- one and a mouse can share my house wet toot tootsie it’s kind of great the whole thing is relative. Since I ad- mired his mountains I imagin- ed I was in his landscapes but opening packages is occurring all over the place. That’s a strong image and I feel like the smallness is directly rooted forgetting to use the new cal- endar I planned. These marks (I imagined) are the sources all the milk flooding wildly over the rolling hills and out of the sun’s comical eyes. Not tears but creamy drops of mammalian weather. I’m given real information and the most difficult part is blindly creating the space where the parts I can’t see or even hear spread out (like the night in Paris when I walked to the movies ) onto my desk and the surrounding hills into the bleachers where everyone is pounding themselves bloody in salute of the hunt all I ever wanted was dinner or at least his love the delight I see in him is equally empty for anyone & probably that’s his stealth. Inner lake. There’s a car a maroon a colourless oval I can imagine the seats and the feeling of hearing a song as we’re weaving over hills. There’s no break. Ev- erybody I ever saw in my seacoast community is already facing the problems huge and gloomy I grant you and the night spills on my keys which are splayed over the counter and outside it’s light. & they are flip- ping their cards every one of them.

I’m having trouble looking animals in the eye. Their empty suits in outer space! Monkeys injected with a virus to show off Our eminent domain, the nervous system. Teacup pigs we breed and obsessive mice Worrying themselves bald in a miniature opera. For pleasures of the tongue we are Winking cattle out of meadows Slashing their throats and swiftly quartering them. In riding habits with gold flame pins we ride horses To hounds, chase a fennec fox until his red Coat flares up against the extinction Of light. Once in a circus we made An elephant disappear and he did not mind.