MY DOG PONTO

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If I say to you “Come, Ponto, want some meat?”
You laugh in your dog-way and bark your “Yes.”
And if I say “Shall we go walking” or
“Stand up, nice Ponto,” then you stand up, or
If I say to you “Lie down” you lie down.
You know what meat is, what it is to walk.
You see the meat perhaps or get an image
Of scampering on the street or chasing dogs
While sniffing in fresh air, exploring bushes.
Upon these levels our minds meet at once,
As if they were the same stuff for such thoughts.
But if I look into your eye and say:
I’ll read to you a chapter on harmonics,
Here’s mad Spinoza’s close wrought demonstration
Of God as substance, here is Isaac Newton’s
Great book on gravitation, here’s a thesis
Upon the logos, of the word made man.
Or if I say let’s talk about my soul—
Since I have talked to yours in terms of meat—
Which sails out like a spider on its thread
Through mathematics, music,—look at you
You merely lie there with half open eye,
And thump your tail quite feebly just because,
And for no other reason save I’m talking,
And I’m your master and you’re fond of me,
And through affection would no doubt be glad
To know what I am saying, as ’twere meat
I might be saying. But I know a way
To make you howl for things not understood:
It makes you howl to hear my new Victrola
With a Beethoven record, why is this?
Perhaps this is to you a maddening token
Of realms that lie above the realms of meat,
And torture you because they have suggestions
Of things beyond you.
But in any case,
Dear Ponto, if you were an infidel
“You might say “What’s harmonics? they’re a joke.”
“And who’s Spinoza, Newton, they are myths.”
“And mathematics, music, can you eat them,”
“For what you cannot eat has no existence.”
Deny them as you will these spheres of thought
Lie as the steps of mountains over you.
They wait for you to gain them, you can find them
By rising to them, then how real they are!
As real as scampering when I take a walk.
But are they all? How do I know what spheres
Of life lie all around me and above me,
Just waiting not for me, but till I climb
And rest awhile and take their meaning in.
How do I know what hand plays a Victrola
With records greater than Beethoven’s song,
Which make me howl as piteously as you?
But here again our minds meet on a level:
I know no more than you do why I howl;
Nor what it is that makes me howl, nor why,
Though not content with meat, I want to know,
And keep as all my own this higher music.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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