WEBVTT

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Thank you, loves.

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As I'm sorry I didn't find
the imprint of my tiny hands

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in the sidewalk outside, I
heard this fighting after.

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Mainly tonight I'll be reading
with my friend Peter Hooten

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a rather long passage from The
Changing Light of Sandover,

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but let me soften
you up or decide

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you to leave after these shorter
excerpts, some earlier poems.

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This is called The Victor
Dog and, even though there's

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no longer a dog on the
label of Victor Records,

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I think we have the icon
fairly well in mind.

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Somebody told me that
when Victor Records began

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to distribute in India, the
dog being an unclean animal,

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they had to put a
cobra on the record,

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listening to the horn
of the gramophone.

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I couldn't have written
my poem about that.

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The Victor Dog.

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Bix to Buxtehude to
Boulez, little white dog

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on the Victor label listens
long and hard as he is able.

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It's all in a day's
work, whatever plays.

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From judgment, it would
seem, he has refrained.

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He even listens
earnestly to Bloch,

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then builds a church
upon our acid rock.

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He's man's, no, he's the
Leiermann's best friend,

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or would be if hearing and
listening were the same.

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Does he hear?

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I fancy he rather smells
those lemon gold arpeggios

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in Ravel's "Les jets d'eau du
palais de ceux qui s'aiment."

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He ponders the Schumann
concertos, tall willow hit

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by lightning, and stays put.

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When he surmises through one of
Bach's eternal boxwood mazes,

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the oboe pungent
as a bitch in heat,

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or when the calypso decants
its raw, bay rum or the moon

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in Wozzeck reddens
ripe for murder,

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he doesn't sneeze or
howl, just listens harder.

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Adamant needles bear down on him
from whirling of outer space,

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too black, too near, but
he was taught as a puppy

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not to flinch.

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Much less to imitate his bête
noir, Blanche, who barked,

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fat, foolish creature,
at King Lear.

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Still others fought in the
road's filth over Jezebel,

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slathered on hearths of
horned and pelted barons.

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His forebears lacked, to
say the least, forbearance.

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Can nature change in him?

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Nothing's impossible.

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The last chord fades, the
night is cold and fine,

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his master's voice rasps through
the groove's bare groves.

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Obediently, in silence
like the graves,

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he sleeps there on the
still warm gramophone only

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to dream he is at the premiere
of a Handel opera long thought

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lost: Il Cane Minore.

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Its allegorical
subject is his story,

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a little dog revolving
around a spindle

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gives rise to harmonies beyond
belief, a cast of stars.

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Is there in Victor's
heart no honey

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for the vanquished or his art?

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The life it asks of
us is a dog's life.

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