Poetry Archives

Strong and slippery, built for the midnight grass-party confronted by four cats,
    he sleeps his time away—the detached first claw on his foreleg which corresponds
    to the thumb, retracted to its tip; the small tuft of fronds
        or katydid legs above each eye, still numbering the units in each group;
            the shadbones regularly set about his mouth, to droop or rise

in unison like the porcupine’s quills—motionless. He lets himself be flat­
    tened out by gravity, as it were a piece of seaweed tamed and weakened by
    exposure to the sun; compelled when extended, to lie
        stationary. Sleep is the result of his delusion that one must do as
            well as one can for oneself; sleep—epitome of what is to

him as to the average person, the end of life. Demonstrate on him how
    the lady caught the dangerous southern snake, placing a forked stick on either
    side of its innocuous neck; one need not try to stir
        him up; his prune shaped head and alligator eyes are not a party to the
            joke. Lifted and handled, he may be dangled like an eel or set

up on the forearm like a mouse; his eyes bisected by pupils of a pin’s
    width, are flickeringly exhibited, then covered up. May be? I should say,
    might have been; when he has been got the better of in a
        dream—as in a fight with nature or with cats—we all know it. Profound sleep is
            not with him, a fixed illusion. Springing about with froglike ac­

curacy, emitting jerky cries when taken in the hand, he is himself
    again; to sit caged by the rungs of a domestic chair would be unprofit­
    able—human. What is the good of hypocrisy? It
        is permissible to choose one’s employment, to abandon the wire nail, the
            roly-poly, when it shows signs of being no longer a pleas­

ure, to score the adjacent magazine with a double line of strokes. He can
    talk, but insolently says nothing. What of it? When one is frank, one’s very
    presence is a compliment. It is clear that he can see
        the virtue of naturalness, that he is one of those who do not regard
            the published fact as a surrender. As for the disposition

invariably to affront, an animal with claws wants to have to use
    them; that eel-like extension of trunk into tail is not an accident. To
    leap, to lengthen out, divide the air—to purloin, to pursue.
        to tell the hen: fly over the fence, go in the wrong way—in your perturba­
            tion—this is life; to do less would be nothing but dishonesty.