163 Animal poems

Nose tucked under tail, you are a warm, furred planet centered in my bed. All night I orbit, tangle-limbed, in the slim space allotted to me. If I accidentally bump you from sleep, you shift, groan, drape your chin on my hip. O, that languid, movie-star drape! I can never resist it. Digging my fingers into your fur, kneading, I wonder: How do you dream? What do you adore? Why should your black silk ears feel like happiness? This is how it is with love. Once invited, it steps in gently, circles twice, and takes up as much space as you will give it.

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers. My big dog sang with me so purely, puckering her ruffled lips into an O, beginning with small, swallowing sounds like Coltrane musing, then rising to power and resonance, gulping air to continue— her passion and sense of flawless form— singing not with me, but for the art of dogs. We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust," "Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido." She was a great master and died young, leaving me with unrelieved grief, her talents known to only a few. Now I have a small dog who does not sing, but listens with discernment, requiring skill and spirit in my falsetto voice. I sing her name and words of love andante, con brio, vivace, adagio. Sometimes she is so moved she turns to place a paw across her snout, closes her eyes, sighing like a girl I held and danced with years ago. But I am a pretender to dog music. The true strains rise only from the rich, red chambers of a canine heart, these melodies best when the moon is up, listeners and singers together or apart, beyond friendship and anger, far from any human imposter— ballads of long nights lifting to starlight, songs of bones, turds, conquests, hunts, smells, rankings, things settled long before our birth.

A stay of execution: one last day, your day, old Everydog, then, as they say, or as we say (a new trick to avoid finalities implicit in destroyed), you have to be put down, or put to sleep— the very dog who, once, would fight to keep from putting down, despite our shouts, a shoe until he gnawed it to the sole, and who would sit up, through our sleepless nights, to bark away some menace looming in the dark. Can you pick up the sense of all this talk? Or do you still just listen for a walk, or else, the ultimate reward, a car?— My God, tomorrow's ride . . . Well, here we are, right now. You stare at me and wag your tail. I stare back, dog-like, big and dumb. Words fail. No more commands, ignore my monologue, go wander off. Good dog. You're a good dog. And you could never master, anyway, the execution, as it were, of Stay

I used to be a dog. What kind? Oh, a mongrel. Nothing poncy like the black cocker spaniel called Bonzo I had as a child. And certainly not one of those four-footed, aloof snakes that go by the name of greyhound. I remember each and every one of the lice that lived on me. Where did I live? In Sicily, where the sun shines like a fried egg every day of the year. I had the nose of an angel — I could smell porcini fifty trees away. I knew the man who would start a fight with my master the moment he walked in the bar door. I drank a saucer of red wine every day. I loved eating the butterflies that floated past me — one pounce and they were gone. And they were delicious. Better than the bones of a donkey whose meat provided salami for my master and his family. The boy was very good to me — he used to take me down to the sea and let me splash in the waves; then I’d come out onto the sand, barking, and I’d shake all the seawater onto him, wetting his clothes. He loved laughing, and I loved barking. Those were the days. I never saw a kennel. My home was an old blanket under a gnarled vine that had been there since Dante wrote his only sestina, in homage to the troubadours. The heat was often scorching. The boy found it funny to put a straw hat on my head, one dyed in the colors of the Italian flag. I was up early, out scouting for rats to frighten away. 
I once peed on a hedgehog to see what it would do. I ran along the clifftop, barking at the wheeling seagulls, and at the fishing boats they flew above. I sometimes ate my master’s leftover spaghetti bolognese in the taverna. My tail would wag like a fan revolving from the ceiling. I was taught party tricks that I’d be asked to do when the grappa was being downed. I’d lie down on the floor and die, to great applause. I’d sit up and beg, to coos and laughter, and I’d be rewarded with a sausage, and those were sausages to swim the Adriatic for. I’d sometimes go down to the harbor to look for an attractive gray bitch I liked the smell of. I’d have to fight off other dogs, but I was good at that. I ate one of their ears. Once I followed her onto a boat that was heading out to fill up with fish. I had to swim back and I lay on the sand and slept. When I got home my master whipped me. I ran to my blanket, whimpering. I was once brought to a circus, and into the tent of a one-eyed woman with black hair who had a pet parrot. I barked at it, and the parrot expertly returned my bark. I lay on the multi-colored mat and observed the strange bird who observed me. I was glad to leave that tent. I enjoyed hearing the boy play his flute in the evenings. I heard those notes flutter up into the air, and I tried to see them, but never could. I never stopped trying, though. The one thing I couldn’t eat was cheese. The few times I tried it I vomited. On the first occasion that happened I tried to eat it again. If I got the chance now I’d manage it, I’m sure. Who would not like to be a dog in the sun? A dog in the sun, like I used to be, long ago. It was an honor.

Some teeth down there some hair and gray gums Some grass and dirt down there some gristle and whimpers All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade I had a dog I had three dogs I sit and stay They did not disappear into the trees one day Their brains were not broken coral on the street They were meat • Some leash down there some shit and tennis balls I had a dog I had three dogs I sit and beg Their brains were not broken coral on the street They were not meat one day they did not disappear into the trees All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some whimpers down there some nipples and pink tum-tums • Some biting tails down there some sunlight and long nails Some fleas dug up some mange and gray tongues I had a dog They were meat I had three dogs They did not disappear into the streets They did not tree Some haunch skid and drag down there some mouths one day They did not smell like baby’s breath All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade • Some grass and dirt down there some teeth and ruined carpets I had a dog I had three dogs I fucked fleas All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some eyelashes down there some eating grass and mange some baby’s breath One day their brains were not broken coral on the street They did not disappear into the trees • Some sit and stay down there some meat and sunlight Their brains were not broken coral on the street they did not disappear into the trees They did not fuck fleas All stupid grinning death running around the yard making a little child cry with each busted grass blade Some bones and baby’s breath down there some bark and seizures Distant watery eyes One day I had a dog I had three dogs

As if there could be a world Of absolute innocence In which we forget ourselves The owners throw sticks And half-bald tennis balls Toward the surf And the happy dogs leap after them As if catapulted— Black dogs, tan dogs, Tubes of glorious muscle— Pursuing pleasure More than obedience They race, skid to a halt in the wet sand, Sometimes they'll plunge straight into The foaming breakers Like diving birds, letting the green turbulence Toss them, until they snap and sink Teeth into floating wood Then bound back to their owners Shining wet, with passionate speed For nothing, For absolutely nothing but joy.

How many times I have provided For your death; the apple turned one way Then the other, an arrangement made, The softer ground. To hold your head As if this mattered, to say what I think Essential into your ear, To watch the eye look everywhere to find What it does not know it looks for. To fasten you down in the one place Where no one can say anything more, Being nothing else but breath leaving, While the man with the needle stands by Until the signal of how it is time. To believe I know what will happen next; to leave the hill As the body stiffens; to pass each blossom Of blood in the snow as if I understood All I was capable of.

When fishes flew and forests walked And figs grew upon thorn, Some moment when the moon was blood Then surely I was born. With monstrous head and sickening cry And ears like errant wings, The devil’s walking parody On all four-footed things. The tattered outlaw of the earth, Of ancient crooked will; Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb, I keep my secret still. Fools! For I also had my hour; One far fierce hour and sweet: There was a shout about my ears, And palms before my feet.

PROLOGUE Animals tame and animals feral prowled the Dark Ages in search of a moral: the canine was Loyal, the lion was Virile, rabbits were Potent and gryphons were Sterile. Sloth, Envy, Gluttony, Pride—every peril was fleshed into something phantasmic and rural, while Courage, Devotion, Thrift—every bright laurel crowned a creature in some mythological mural. Scientists think there is something immoral in singular brutes having meat that is plural: beasts are mere beasts, just as flowers are floral. Yet between the lines there’s an implicit demurral; the habit stays with us, albeit it’s puerile: when Darwin saw squirrels, he saw more than Squirrel. 1. THE ANT The ant, Darwin reminded us, defies all simple-mindedness: Take nothing (says the ant) on faith, and never trust a simple truth. The PR men of bestiaries eulogized for centuries this busy little paragon, nature’s proletarian— but look here, Darwin said: some ants make slaves of smaller ants, and end exploiting in their peonages the sweating brows of their tiny drudges. Thus the ant speaks out of both sides of its mealy little mouth: its example is extolled to the workers of the world, but its habits also preach the virtues of the idle rich. 2. THE WORM Eyeless in Gaza, earless in Britain, lower than a rattlesnake’s belly-button, deaf as a judge and dumb as an audit: nobody gave the worm much credit till Darwin looked a little closer at this spaghetti-torsoed loser. Look, he said, a worm can feel and taste and touch and learn and smell; and ounce for ounce, they’re tough as wrestlers, and love can turn them into hustlers, and as to work, their labors are mythic, small devotees of the Protestant Ethic: they’ll go anywhere, to mountains or grassland, south to the rain forests, north to Iceland, fifty thousand to every acre guzzling earth like a drunk on liquor, churning the soil and making it fertile, earning the thanks of every mortal: proud Homo sapiens, with legs and arms— his whole existence depends on worms. So, History, no longer let the worm’s be an ignoble lot unwept, unhonored, and unsung. Moral: even a worm can turn. 3. THE RABBIT a.   Except in distress, the rabbit is silent, but social as teacups: no hare is an island. (Moral: silence is golden—or anyway harmless; rabbits may run, but never for Congress.) b.   When a rabbit gets miffed, he bounds in an orbit, kicking and scratching like—well, like a rabbit. (Moral: to thine own self be true—or as true as you can; a wolf in sheep’s clothing fleeces his skin.) c.   He populates prairies and mountains and moors, but in Sweden the rabbit can’t live out of doors. (Moral: to know your own strength, take a tug at your shackles; to understand purity, ponder your freckles.) d.   Survival developed these small furry tutors; the morals of rabbits outnumber their litters. (Conclusion: you needn’t be brainy, benign, or bizarre to be thought a great prophet. Endure. Just endure.) 4. THE GOSSAMER Sixty miles from land the gentle trades that silk the Yankee clippers to Cathay sift a million gossamers, like tides of fluff above the menace of the sea. These tiny spiders spin their bits of webbing and ride the air as schooners ride the ocean; the Beagle trapped a thousand in its rigging, small aeronauts on some elusive mission. The Megatherium, done to extinction by its own bigness, makes a counterpoint to gossamers, who breathe us this small lesson: for survival, it’s the little things that count.

Dogs so long with us we forget that wolves allowed as how they might be tamed and sprang up all over the globe, with all humans, all at once, like a good idea. So we tamed our own hearts. Leashed them or sent them to camp’s edge. Even the shrinks once agreed, in dreams our dogs are our deepest selves. Ur Dog, a Siberian, dogged the heels of nomads, then turned south to Egypt to keep Pharaoh safe. Seemed strange, my mother sighed, when finally we got a hound, . . . a house without a dog. Her world never knew a yard un-dogged and thus unlocked. Sudden intrusions impossible where yappers yap. Or maybe she objected to empty armchairs, rooms too quiet without the beat of tail thump or paw thud. N’de, Ojibwe say,my pet, which also suggests ode, that spot in the chest, the part you point to when you pray, or say with great feeling—great meaning, meaning dog-love goes that deep.