I

When I was yea high we had a dog, a beagle

Named Merry Heart. She ate Red Heart

Dog food and was dumb. Never chained up,

In heat, she let every mongrel hump

Her and had eighteen litters of mutts.

You would think my father would prevent her

Or have her spayed, but he had a big heart like a

Valentine and thought she ought to be free

To do as she liked in those matters

Because he was. I understood. And even now,

At this end of the chain of my days,

When I doodle, I doodle, in red ink, red hearts.

II

When I was going (for the third time) mad,

Last Spring, alone in the house, I chose

Two small breast-like blood oranges

To butcher and ingest. They were my mother's

Breasts. They were my eyeballs. They were

My testicles put back down my mouth --

A bloody deed -- the orange juice dripping

On the knife, on my hands, on my heart,

On my immaculate 45th birthday dress

(The usual corduroy), engorging,

Slurping, in haste, lest the Eumenides

Find me, lest I hear the old hags scream

"He's murdering his mother!" lest I re-

Member Queen, our St. Bernard, the dog

We had in the Depression, who slaughtered

Sheep, slicing with her teeth the jugulars;

My father had to have her put away,

Poor dog, reverting to her nature, wild.

III

I am Daffy, Daffy-Down-Dilly, the Welsh

Terrier his father gave him as consolation

In the Spring of '32. I am in dog heaven

(Rather like being in a poem), looking down

At my old Master—I see him, drunk

This winter's night, the coal fire dying

In the grate. A blizzard. A car is stuck

In a drift. He does not help his neighbor.

He is searching his bookshelves for songs

Of Spring. He reads Chaucer Whan that

Aprille, Shakespeare  Hey, Ding-a-Ding,

Eliot the cruelest month—the great poems—

Nothing gives him pleasure. Tonight,

The phono blaring (HMV) Schubert's

Frühling, he is full of jaundiced speculations.

I wish he would sober up and go to Jamaica

To see the world's largest collection

Of self-gratifying orchids, or, better,

Without caution, let his mind roam back

To the heart of childhood where I sit,

Cowed, amid a crowd of daffodils, yapping.

I would instruct him: all our sweetness

Rolled up into one ball, tossing and fetching.

That lesson learned, he could mount the staircase,

Wake her in his arms and say, "My dear,

Come, my pleasure is your pleasure." Then

The yellow crocus and forsythia would bloom.

IV

Come on, Nicky, you old long-lost mongrel

With the green eyes, wagging your tail,

Thonk, thonk, against the layers

Of my corrupted heart, let's leave

This unhealthy house and go out

Into the innocent air of 30 Augusts ago,

To the cornfields around my father's

Country house, to wander where

Viridian sumac and the cottonwoods

Quiver in the breeze of boyhood. Look,

A squinny burrow. Look, a garter snake

Green as the jimson weed it scurries through.

And there's Dad, hoeing around potato plants,

Last licks in, before the storm, hoving up

Over Happy Valley, blows all the walnuts

Off the walnut tree -- a barrage of emeralds --

Thonk, thonk, thonk -- against the house.

V

Tar Baby, a black Cocker with blue eyes

Like my father's. After the divorce, Tar,

Out of my father's bitch, Black Bubble,

Sired by Iowa's Philosopher's Dream,

Was a part of the whole I nursed

From a pup. That winter Tar was all

Of a man I had in the house. I remember,

Once, when he displeased me, I thrashed

With my hand until we hurt. Always

A rover, he would be gone for days

And return for a meal and be gone,

Again, from my heart. Within two years

I returned him to my father (some

Problem in my mother's moving) and then,

So they said, he got out and was gone

For good. I never saw him again unless

It was him I saw, from the top of a ferris wheel,

Ten years later, returned for the Iowa Fair,

Off yonder, I thought I saw Tar

(O Death) making his way between the legs

Of strangers. I think I see him now in the blue

Of any blue-eyed boy who catches my breath.

VI

The poems I wrote before I wrote this poem

Were like lilacs that bloomed atop the bush

Last Spring, a melancholy spray of flowers

Washed by the syncopation of the rain.

This lavender poem is sung in the full sun-

Light, height of summer of my years, a song

Whose melodious rhythm rushes to the heart

And sweeps on past the contours of this page.

And now, in a violet-hushed sunset, I sense,

Coming on across the stubbled cornfields,

An age-old mauve-like reminder, Father Death,

Who harvests even the most perfect poems.

But Cassandra, old blond Cocker princess

Of the household, will, above the North Wind snow,

Howl prophetic echoes, future poetry,

My purple mouth frozen like an O.