The world cannot be
penetrated. It can only be
surrounded.
We want no metaphors
for life, no logic.
No proper nouns.
But the thing itself.
He is poodle, the sophisticate,
the result of breeding
and planning and accident.
What can poetry say?
What should it do?
say
“Enough of the program!”
and prowl
around and sniff stones
to find the track of god.
It was ten years ago, twenty years ago,
a dog
wandered through a door.
a black standard poodle,
a shape of Mephistopheles
in Goethe’s Faust.
What do you see?
I see nothing
but a black poodle.
An unexamined world:
The poodle is not good
or bad, but a philosopher
of smells. You cannot stand
above the world
and know it.
Between smells there is no edge.
There is no opposite of lemon.
Sweet does not mean good.
Only imagining
the difference
between what is safe
and what is spoiled,
between eating
and not.
Tim Fitzmaurice
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