We Are All Whitman: #30: Animal Song
I think I could turn and live with animals,
they are so placid and self-contained.
[ . . . ] They do not sweat and whine about their condition.
Walt Whitman (32)
Who does not marvel at the spider’s creative saliva,
the ant’s perfection,
the butterfly’s unsettled elegance,
that the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven?
I used to fly into high dudgeon
with the insult “beast”;
now in my soul I honor it
in spite of extravagant haughtiness.
As when I pet Babe, my placid sheepdog,
my animal-companion,
who rejoices in my arrivals,
licks me in the time of solitude,
plays, begs, offers me therapy,
understands me, guides;
to the point, as he barks, of seeming to call out in a wondrous language,
paying heedless attention to incongruent commands,
and at each goodbye howling his sentiments
with an authentic whimper.
Also my girlfriend’s cat and T. S. Eliot’s practical ones
pull it off with their spoiled ways,
the rogue Mistoffelees, mysterious
Macavity dissembling his smooth crime.
Our follies do not begin to match their stratagems;
they are all indisputable circus performers.
Recently in the zoo's theater
the audience enjoyed a sea lion's applause,
its ball-handling skills, and other acrobatics.
I witnessed, wonderstruck,
in the oceanic snow of the Patagonian Steppe,
a rage of penguins
and their solemn march.
We are touched by the mama's promenades with her ducklings
and the melody of puppy love still moves us.
Little rabbits with their ears' alert softness
share our patios.
The splendor of spirited stallions
fresh and responsive to my caresses,
with their bodies that tremble with pleasure as we race around and return.
The Olympic kiss of Leda by the swan
revives every so often in a sigh.
The sublimity of eagle’s flight.
It has been said that the poem is a bird,
the whole universe a winged purpose.
I wish, sometimes, to possess some of their gifts and talents.
They bring me tokens of myself,
they evince them plainly in their possession.
And you, eloquent Whitman, insist to us
that a mouse is miracle enough
to stagger sextillions of infidels,
that the cow crunching with depress’d head surpasses any statue,
that what the oxen express in their eyes
says more than all the print I have read in my life.
There they stand, with the donkey, in the manger.
They accept what they are and what they have
with neither resentment nor complaints.
They don't need mirrors to fashion their beauty.
They live naked, unshod, in the hours’ Eden.
They sing the breaking of day with a trilling not learned in school.
Elk and other species snort when surprised
or watch you without fuss, contemplating your presence.
They move away, peaceful, toward forest and the wisdom of its trees.
They comprehend their place in the vastness of the universe.
They sleep in peace. They don’t trouble themselves over blame or sin;
nor worries about money
or the corruption of more distant ambitions.
They seem contented in their proper niches
of plants, earth, air, fields, and rocks.
Who would not trade their qualities
for some human ones that afflict us?
What library did tigers’ eyes or lions’ noontide golden
color suggest to Borges?
Copyright Credit: Luis Alberto Ambroggio, "We Are All Whitman: #30: “Animal Song”" from Todos somos Whitman/We Are All Whitman. Copyright © 2016 by Luis Alberto Ambroggio. Reprinted by permission of Arte Público Press.