This next poem was censored by the Poetry
Society of America many years ago, to my great surprise.
It's always delightful to be censored.
I have a poem, which is called "Baby Pictures of Famous
Dictators," and when it was translated in Eastern Europe,
it was translated into "Baby Pictures of Famous Directors."
[LAUGHTER]
So a vague term, directors.
Could be movie directors.
Anyway, so this one, it's really nothing.
I mean, it's a kind of poem--
it's, again, a very New England sort of poem,
going to country fairs.
And one of the really big events--
it's probably the same thing over here.
I mean, it's an eternal human event
that people find very interesting is
to have a kind of a tent where you have the freak animals,
where you have the various sort of, I don't know,
six legged dogs and cows that have three heads or two heads
and that sort of thing.
You know the sort of scene, and just sort
of one night being there and then just sort of watching
a little dog who had--
he had two extra legs, and they made him do tricks,
and that seemed to be sort of the height of indignity.
It was terrible.
I mean, you already should earn your living
by having these extra legs, and you still
have to go around doing things that any dumb dog can do.
So anyway, this poem is called "Animal Acts."
And, I mean, I think those people with Poetry Society
were upset at the title, and something
later on in the poem bothered them a great deal.
But I was thinking of all almost like a sort of Johnny Carson
show where you have people bring their pets or whatever.
Tigers and-- I don't know.
You've seen those things.
I don't have to tell you.
So anyway, I just make my own little series
of acts, vaudeville acts.
"Animal Acts."
A bear who eats with a silver spoon.
Two apes adept at grave digging.
Rats who do calculus.
A police dog who copulates with a woman who takes undertaker's
measurements.
A bedbug who suffers, who has doubts about his existence.
The miraculous laughing dove.
1,000 year old turtle playing billiards.
A chicken who cuts his own throat, who bleeds.
The trainer with his sugar cubes, with his chair and whip,
the evenings when they all huddle in a cage,
smoking cheap cigars, lazily marking the cards
in the new deck.