The Trouble with Poetry (5 page)

I am the dog you put to sleep,

as you like to call the needle of oblivion,

come back to tell you this simple thing:

I never liked you—not one bit.

When I licked your face,

I thought of biting off your nose.

When I watched you toweling yourself dry,

I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,

your lack of animal grace,

the way you would sit in a chair to eat,

a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away,

but I was too weak, a trick you taught me

while I was learning to sit and heel,

and—greatest of insults—shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash

would excite me

but only because it meant I was about

to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,

but I have no reason to lie.

I hated the car, the rubber toys,

disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.

You always scratched me in the wrong place.

All I ever wanted from you

was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe

as the moon rose in the sky.

It took all of my strength

not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,

the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,

the absurdity of your lawn,

and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed

and are glad it did not happen sooner—

that everyone here can read and write,

the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.

No one expected all three of them

to sit there on their tree stumps forever,

their senses covered with their sinuous paws

so as to shut out the vile, nefarious world.

As it happened,

it was the one on the left

who was the first to desert his post,

uncupping his ears,

then loping off into the orbit of rumors and lies,

but also into the realm of symphonies,

the sound of water tumbling over rocks

and wind stirring the leafy domes of trees.

Then the monkey on the right lowered his hands

from his wide mouth and slipped away

in search of someone to talk to,

some news he could spread,

maybe something to curse or shout about.

And that left the monkey in the middle

alone with his silent vigil,

shielding his eyes from depravity’s spectacle,

blind to the man whipping his horse,

the woman shaking her baby in the air,

but also unable to see

the russet sun on a rough shelf of rock

and apples in the grass at the base of a tree.

Sometimes, he wonders about the other two,

listens for the faint sounds of their breathing

up there on the mantel

alongside the clock and the candlesticks.

And some nights in the quiet house

he wishes he could break the silence with a question,

but he knows the one on his right

would not be able to hear,

and the one to his left,

according to their sacred oath—

the one they all took with one paw raised—

is forbidden forever to speak, even in reply.

I think I know what he would say

about the dream I had last night

in which my nose was lopped off in a sword fight,

leaving me to wander the streets of 18th-century Paris

with a kind of hideous blowhole in the middle of my face.

But what would be his thoughts

about the small brown leather cone

attached to my face with goose grease

which I purchased from a gnome-like sales clerk

at a little shop called House of a Thousand Noses?

And how would he interpret

my stopping before every gilded mirror

to admire the fine grain and the tiny brass studs,

always turning to show my best profile,

my clean-shaven chin slightly raised?

Surely, narcissism fails to capture

my love of posing in those many rooms,

sometimes with an open window behind me

showing the blue sky which would be eclipsed

by the Eiffel Tower in roughly a hundred years.

Viewed from the roof of a tall building,

people on the street

are said to take on the appearance of ants,

but I have been up here for so long,

gazing down over this parapet,

that the ants below have begun to resemble people.

Look at that one lingering

near a breadcrumb on the curb,

does he not share the appearance of my brother-in-law?

And the beautiful young ant

in the light summer dress

with the smooth, ovoid head,

the one heading up the lamppost—

could she not double for my favorite cousin

with her glad eyes and her pulled-back hair?

Surely, one with the face

of my mother and another with the posture

of my father will soon go hobbling by.

After I had beaten my sword into a ploughshare,

I beat my ploughshare into a hoe,

then beat the hoe into a fork,

which I used to eat my dinner alone.

And when I had finished dinner,

I beat my fork into a toothpick,

which I twirled on my lips

then flicked over a low stone wall

as I walked along the city river

under the clouds and stars,

quite happy but for the thought

that I should have beaten that toothpick into a shilling

so I could buy a newspaper to read

after climbing the stairs to my room.

I am the third one

from the left in the third row.

The girl I have been in love with

since the 5th grade is just behind me

to the right, the one with the bangs.

The boy who pushes me down

in the playground

is the last one on the left in the top row.

And my friend Paul is the second one

in the second row, the one

with his collar sticking out, next to the teacher.

But that’s not all—

if you look carefully you can see

our house in the background

with its porch and its brick chimney

and up in the clouds

you can see the faces of my parents,

and over there, off to the side,

Superman is balancing

a green car over his head with one hand.

Because tomorrow

I will turn 420 in dog years,

I have decided to take myself

for a long walk on the path around the lake,

and when I get back to the house,

I will jump up on my chest

and lick my nose, my ears and eyelids

while I tell myself again and again to get down.

Then I will replenish my bowl

with cold water from the tap

and hand myself a biscuit from the jar

which I will hold gingerly in my teeth.

Then I will make three circles

and lie down on the wood floor at my feet

and close my eyes

as I type all morning and into the afternoon,

checking every once in a while

to make sure I am still there,

reaching down with one hand

to stroke my furry, esteemed, venerable head.

I want to carry you

and for you to carry me

the way voices are said to carry over water.

Just this morning on the shore,

I could hear two people talking quietly

in a rowboat on the far side of the lake.

They were talking about fishing,

then one changed the subject,

and, I swear, they began talking about you.

If you ever asked me

how my drawing classes are going,

I would tell you that I enjoy

adhering to the outline of a thing,

to follow the slope of an individual pear

or the curve of a glossy piano.

And I love trailing my hand

over the smooth membrane of bond,

the intelligent little trinity

of my fingers gripping the neck of the pencil

while the other two dangle below

like the fleshy legs of a tiny swimmer.

I would add that I can get lost

crosshatching the shadow of a chair

or tracing and retracing

the slight undercarriage of a breast.

Even the preparations call out to me—

taping the paper to a wooden board,

brushing its surface clean,

and sharpening a few pencils to a fine point.

The thin hexagonal pencil

is mightier than the pen,

for it can modulate from firm to faint

and shift from thin to broad

whenever it leans more acutely over the page—

the bright yellow pencil,

which is also mightier than the sword

for there is no erasing what the sword can do.

We all started with the box and the ball

then moved on to the cup and the lamp,

the serrated leaf, the acorn with its cap.

But I want to graduate to the glass decanter

and learn how to immobilize in lead

translucent curtains lifted in the air.

I want to draw

four straight lines that will connect me

to the four points of the compass,

to the bright spires of cities,

the overlapping trellises,

the turning spokes of the world.

One day I want to draw freehand

a continuous figure

that will begin with me

when the black tip touches the paper

and end with you when it is lifted

and set down beside a luminous morning window.

With its spiraling metal body

and white pages for wings,

my notebook flies over my bed while I sleep—

a bird full of quotations and tiny images

who loves the night’s dark rooms,

glad now to be free of my scrutiny and my pen point.

Tomorrow, it will go with me

into the streets where I may stop to look

at my reflection in a store window,

and later I may break a piece of bread

at a corner table in a restaurant

then scribble something down.

But tonight it flies around me in circles

sailing through a column of moonlight,

then beating its paper wings even more,

once swooping so low

as to ripple the surface of a lake

in a dream in which I happen to be drowning.

I am under the covers

waiting for the heat to come up

with a gurgle and hiss

and the banging of the water hammer

that will frighten the cold out of the room.

And I am listening to a blues singer

named Precious Bryant

singing a song called “Fool Me Good.”

If you don’t love me, baby, she sings,

would you please try to fool me good?

I am also stroking the dog’s head

and writing down these words,

which means that I am calmly flying

in the face of the Buddhist advice

to do only one thing at a time.

Just pour the tea,

just look into the eye of the flower,

just sing the song—

one thing at a time

and you will achieve serenity,

which is what I would love to do

as the fan-blades of the morning begin to turn.

If you don’t love me, baby,

she sings

as a day-moon fades in the window

and the hands circle the clock,

would you please try to fool me good?

Yes, Precious, I reply,

I will fool you as good as I can,

but first I have to learn to listen to you

with my whole heart,

and not until you have finished

will I put on my slippers,

squeeze out some toothpaste,

and make a big foamy face in the mirror,

freshly dedicated to doing one thing at a time—

one note at a time for you, darling,

one tooth at a time for me.

Last of the strong sun

on white tiles, stack of white towels,

faint piano melody from downstairs,

and the downpour of hot water on my shoulders.

I lift my face to the nozzle, close my eyes

and see mountains folded

over mountains,

smoke rising from a woodcutter’s hut,

and in the distance, billowing pastel clouds.

It must be China I am beholding

on this early summer evening—

the great sway of rivers,

thousands of birds rising on the wing,

the jade and mulberries of China,

plum blossoms—now the cry of a pheasant.