163 Animal poems

Sometimes the horse is simply a horse. Sometimes the horse is a stalwart bearer of bodies. Sometimes the horse is stubborn, refusing to ford the river, or the horse is a mistake in the vapor, what looks like a horse emerging out of a thrust of fog on Telegraph Avenue. There’s the perpetual feeling of being overdressed for summer and underdressed for spring. I’m variously sweat or shudder. I mistake the strange bodies for those I owe apologies to, oversleep and open my eyes on the clock radio, the time a typo, the apartment a disaster. Sometimes the horse is a disaster or the horse is time in a trot or a canter. Sometimes the horse is a boy growing in time into a man who often laments, A horse, a horse, my kingdom, etc. But there is no horse. There are two days good and one day bad without any hint of a horse. Sometimes speaking about the horse is a means of avoiding speaking about myself which is lousy. Late last night myself regarding another carelessly. Late last night my body with a temporary body. The horse is the taut metaphor for sex, but sometimes the horse is the taut silence after. Sometimes the horse is the silence after her body rises in the embarrassment of morning and leaves, and this silence is filled with less than remorse but with more than indifference. This is a feeling there is no word for. What I decided in place of what I needed. I should eat better. I should vacuum more often. I should settle down and raise a young horse. Sometimes the horse is unspoken, the horse is this feeling that will be forgotten, is the self unable to alter its ineffable horse. Late last night, a pervasive clopping of the horse on the hill. Late last night, the horse as a foghorn over the Bay. I should be rained on. I should not be forgiven.

He’s 1200 pounds of pink pork covered by black bristles stiff enough to needle and sew with, Pretty Ricky, all six feet of him spread out, asleep, no fancy dancer, neither twirler nor prancer, just eats and sleeps, the biggest boar at the Fair, oblivious to gawkers, smirkers, cholesterol, or weight watchers, fat off the hoof, fat lying flat, good only for breeding and eating, he won’t even stand to show off all the pork cuts displayed on the poster behind him: ham, it says, from the butt, oldest meat of civilized man; kabobs from the shoulder, roasted on swords by early Asian nomads; spareribs, sausage, and bacon from the belly. Pretty Ricky urges me to swear off pork, but it’s lunchtime and my stomach wanders off to a foot-long or a brat with ‘kraut. I think twice, three times, waffle back and forth between meat and a veggie wrap, as, in front of me, many meals stretch out, dozing.

From down the road, starting up and stopping once more, the sound of a puppy on a chain who has not yet discovered he will spend his life there. Foolish dog, to forget where he is and wander until he feels the collar close fast around his throat, then cry all over again about the little space in which he finds himself. Soon, when there is no grass left in it and he understands it is all he has, he will snarl and bark whenever he senses a threat to it. Who would believe this small sorrow could lead to such fury no one would ever come near him?

Ostrich and Lark started each morning together at first light, day in and day out. And they parted at nightfall. Every day they nibbled an ongoing meal: a few seeds here, a few seeds there; for Ostrich, the occasional lizard. All day the sun glared out of cloudless blue. Every day, all day, over the cidada’s drone, a drizzle of buzzings fell, and a downpour of birdsong. Hornbill, Bee-eater, Hoopoe, Diederik, Mousebird, Whydah, Canary: from gray-light-come to last-light-gone, the fancy-dressed suitors of the veld warbled their rain-shower jazz. But Ostrich was silent. Lark sang the first song of the day, perched tall, slender, the tawny brown on a termite castle or a low branch of a camel thorn tree. But Ostrich was silent. When Lark sang, he flickered his wings, and his white throat feathers trembled. All day Lark sang, standing still or flitting, his open wings vermillion-spangled. But Ostrich was silent. At dusk Lark sought his hidden nest on the ground. Ostrich sat down under an acacia tree and tucked his head under one of his black-and-white wings. Sometimes he dreamed of flying. Sometimes he dreamed of singing the sky full of stars. Sometimes he dreamed of the green season, drinking caught water, and drinking, and drinking. At first light, Lark called, and together they started their day. One evening, as the great red sun sank toward the tree-spiked horizon and the birds swooped to their nests; as the plant eaters gathered at full alert and the meat eaters woke to prowl; as the gates of night opened to the dark, Ostrich fluttered his billowy wings. He stretched his graceful neck, closed his eyes, and TWOO-WOO-WOOOT Ostrich found his voice, a voice part lion’s roar, part foghorn, part old man trumpeting into his handkerchief. Ostrich was booming! Which is what ostriches do. The veld fell silent. And Ostrich boomed like thunderheads on the horizon. Ostrich boomed like the rainstorm that ends the dusty months of thirst. Ostrich boomed like the promise of jubilant green, like the promise of birth. Ostrich boomed Lark right off his perch! Lark flew up to an Ostrich-high branch and looked at his friend with a big WOW in his eyes. Ostrich had found his voice at last, his own beauty, his big, terrific self.

From the ninth-century Irish poem Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk: His whole instinct is to hunt, Mine to free the meaning pent. More than loud acclaim, I love Books, silence, thought, my alcove. Happy for me, Pangur Bán Child-plays round some mouse’s den. Truth to tell, just being here, Housed alone, housed together, Adds up to its own reward: Concentration, stealthy art. Next thing an unwary mouse Bares his flank: Pangur pounces. Next thing lines that held and held Meaning back begin to yield. All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I Focus my less piercing gaze On the challenge of the page. With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills. When the longed-for, difficult Answers come, I too exult. So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation. Taking pleasure, taking pains, Kindred spirits, veterans. Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade. Day and night, my own hard work Solves the cruxes, makes a mark.

The moon shears up on Tahoe now: A panther leaps to a tamarack bough. She crouches, hugging the crooked limb: She hears the nearing steps of him Who sent the little puff of smoke That stretched her mate beneath the oak. Her eyes burn beryl, two yellow balls, As Fate counts out his last footfalls. A sudden spring, a demon cry, Carnivorous laughter to the sky. Her teeth are fastened in his throat (The moon rides in her silver boat.) And now one scream of long delight Across the caverns of the night!

What struck me first was their panic. Some were pulled by the wind from moving to the ends of the stacked cages, some had their heads blown through the bars— and could not get them in again. Some hung there like that—dead— their own feathers blowing, clotting in their faces. Then I saw the one that made me slow some— I lingered there beside her for five miles. She had pushed her head through the space between bars—to get a better view. She had the look of a dog in the back of a pickup, that eager look of a dog who knows she's being taken along. She craned her neck. She looked around, watched me, then strained to see over the car—strained to see what happened beyond. That is the chicken I want to be.

He approaches her, trailing his whole fortune, Perfectly cocksure, and suddenly spreads The huge fan of his tail for her amazement. Each turquoise and purple, black-horned, walleyed quill Comes quivering forward, an amphitheatric shell For his most fortunate audience: her alone. He plumes himself. He shakes his brassily gold Wings and rump in a dance, lifting his claws Stiff-legged under the great bulge of his breast. And she strolls calmly away, pecking and pausing, Not watching him, astonished to discover All these seeds spread just for her in the dirt.

My sister and I went out to them with sugar cubes and bridled their heads when they bent down to eat from our palms. We led them over to the long white fence on which we climbed to the topmost rail, then threw our legs across their backs, clutching the reins to steady ourselves against their girth, steering them out into the hills until we were lost, or thought we were, only to find ourselves at Judith Creek or Holcomb Rock where we’d turn back in the early dark, gripping their manes, crouching low, galloping hard on the high soft road across the fields to the open barn.

I rode him through the village, smiling. He tossed his tasseled mane in distress. The villagers took his gesture as vanity, and made no attempt to rein him back. Camped at night by stream and fire, he seemed to think stories were in order. The ghoulish tales twisting out his mouth no longer frightened me. On leaving, I'd taken on a certain complacency. Later, he'd characterize my silence as merely mean. But what is mean about a mouth that, having no stories, claims it can provide no flower for the ear, no wine for the wind? I tried: I told the tale of him, which he (the version being mine) was not much interested in. But all of us, the fattening moon, the yewey trees, the sharp-toothed stars who combed their glowing backs against the sky like cats: we laughed. And now that I had left, where would I take him? He was vehicle and, as such, responsibility. He was deadening, tiresome, and necessary. I made ourselves a home and kept him gently as a pet. Visitors often wonder aloud, How do you manage to keep such a creature inside? The floors are stained with his keep. I tell them my heart is huge and its doors are small. Once I took him in he grew. Now I cannot remove him without killing him, which, frankly, I have never wanted to do.