The other poem that I want to read,
a connection with that one I said it's another animal poem,
but it's not the animal speaking.
It's some counterpart of the animal speaking to its own,
I suppose the projection of itself,
but a projection of some part of itself that it wants to be,
or that it wants to be connected with and is uncertain of.
And I don't think I need to say more
about it than to say that it's a poem in the form of a prayer
the way many of the Psalms are.
And the title and the dramatic approach
of the poem come from this line of that long marvelous elusive
poem of Christopher Smart's, "Jubilate Agno, Rejoice
in the Lamb."
And the fact that it is the lamb is partly ironic to this,
as part of the irony of this particular choice
of a single line.
The line goes, to think of the lamb--
"Let Lemuel bless wolf the wolf, which
is a dog without a master.
But the Lord hears his cries and feeds him in the desert."
Firmament is called Lemuel's blessing.
You that know the way, spirit.
I bless your ears, which are like cypresses
on a mountain with their roots in wisdom.
Let me approach.
I bless your paws and their twenty nails,
which tell their own prayer and are like dice and command
of their own combinations.
Let me not be lost.
I bless your eyes for which I know no comparison.
Run with me like the horizon for without you I
am nothing but a dog lost and hungry,
ill natured, untrustworthy, useless.
My bones together bless you like an orchestra of flutes.
Divert the weapons of the settlements
and lead their dogs a dance.
Where a dog is shameless and wears civility
in his tail like a banner.
Let me wear the opprobrium of possessed
and possesses as a thick tail properly
used to warm my worst and my best parts.
My tail and my laugh bless you.
Lead me past the error at the fork of hesitation.
Deliver me from the roof of the lair, which
clings to me in the morning painful
when I move like a trap.
Even debris has its favorite positions
but they are not yours.
From the roof of kindness with its licked hands,
I have sniffed baited fingers and followed toward necessities
which were not my own.
It would make me a habitué way of back steps,
faithful custodian of fat sheep.
From a roof of prepared comforts with its habitual dishes
sporting my name and its collars and leashes of vanity,
from a roof of approval with its nets, kennels,
and taxidermists, it would use my guts
for its own rackets and instruments
to play its own games and music.
Teach me to recognize its platforms which
are constructed like scaffold.
From the roof of known paths, which would use my feet, tail,
and ears as curios, my head is a nest for tame ants,
my fate is a warning.
I have hidden at wrong times for wrong reasons,
I have been brought to bay more than once.
Another time if I need it, create a little wind
like a cold finger between my shoulders, then let my nails
pour out a torrent of aces like grain
from a threshing machine that fatigue, weather, the old bones
finally be nothing to me.
Let all lights but yours be nothing to me.
Let the memory of tongues not unnerve me so that I stumble
or quake.
But lead me at times beside the still waters.
There when I crouch to drink let me
catch a glimpse of your image before it
is obscured with my own.
Preserve my eyes which are irreplaceable.
Preserve my heart, veins, bones against the slow death building
in them like hornets until the place is entirely theirs.
Preserve my tongue and I will bless you again and again.
Let my ignorance and my failings remain far behind me
like tracks made in a wet season at the end of which I have
vanished so that those who track me for their own twisted ends
may be rewarded only with ignorance and failing.
But let me leave my cry stretched out
behind me like a road on which I have followed you.
And sustain me for my time in the desert
on what is essential to me.