Imagine being a dog and never knowing what you're doing. You're simply @3doing@1: eating garbage, fawning, mounting in public with terrible energy. But let's not be romantic. Those curs, however sweet, don't have souls. For all of the horrors at least some of us have better lives than dogs. Show me a dog that ever printed a book of poems read by no one in particular before he died at seventeen, old age for a dog. No dog ever equaled Rimbaud for grace or greatness, for rum running, gun running, slave trading and buggery. The current phrase, "anything that gets you off," includes dogs but they lack our catholicity. Still, Sergei, we never wanted to be dogs. Maybe indians or princes, Caesars or Mongolian chieftains, women in expensive undergarments. But if women, lesbians to satisfy our ordinary tastes for women. In a fantasy if you become a woman you quickly are caressing your girlfriend. That pervert. I never thought she would. Be like that. When she's away from me. Back to consciousness, the room smells like a locker room. Out the window it's barely May in Moscow and the girls have shed their winter coats. One watches a group of fishermen. She has green eyes and is recent from the bath. If you were close enough which you'll never be you could catch her scent of lemon and the clear softness of her nape where it meets her hair. She'll probably die of flu next year or marry an engineer. The same things really as far as you're concerned. And it's the same in this country. A fine wife and farm, children, animals, three good reviews. Then a foggy day in late March with dozens of crows in the air and a girl on a horse passes you in the woods. Your dog barks. The girl stops, laughing. She has green eyes. Your heart is off and running. Your groin hopes. You pray not to see her again. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...F. DE SAMARA TO A.G.A. by EMILY JANE BRONTE TO MY BOOKS by CAROLINE ELIZABETH SARAH SHERIDAN NORTON FITZ-GREENE HALLECK, AT THE UNVEILING OF HIS STATUE by JOHN GREENLEAF WHITTIER THE POWER OF WOMEN by MATILDA BARBARA BETHAM-EDWARDS EURIPIDES by EDWARD GEORGE EARLE LYTTON BULWER-LYTTON WATER JEWELS by MARY FRANCES MARSHALL BUTTS OBSERVATIONS IN THE ART OF ENGLISH POESY: THE WRITER TO HIS BOOK by THOMAS CAMPION |