A Little Language

Robert Duncan

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says   

that animals have no need of speech and Nature   

abhors the superfluous.   My cat is fluent.   He   

converses when he wants with me.   To speak

is natural.   And whales and wolves I’ve heard   

in choral soundings of the sea and air

know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs   

my mind and heart—they touch the soul.   Here

Dante’s religion that would set Man apart   

damns the effluence of our life from us   

to build therein its powerhouse.

It’s in his animal communication Man is   

      true, immediate, and   

in immediacy, Man is all animal.

His senses quicken in the thick of the symphony,

      old circuits of animal rapture and alarm,

attentions and arousals in which an identity rearrives.

      He hears

particular voices among

      the concert, the slightest   

rustle in the undertones,

      rehearsing a nervous aptitude   

yet to prove his. He sees the flick

      of significant red within the rushing mass

of ruddy wilderness and catches the glow

      of a green shirt

to delite him in a glowing field of green

      —it speaks to him—

and in the arc of the spectrum color   

      speaks to color.

The rainbow articulates

      a promise he remembers   

he but imitates

      in noises that he makes,

this speech in every sense   

the world surrounding him.

He picks up on the fugitive tang of mace

      amidst the savory mass,

and taste in evolution is an everlasting key.

      There is a pun of scents in what makes sense.

      Myrrh it may have been,

the odor of the announcement that filld the house.

      He wakes from deepest sleep   

upon a distant signal and waits   

      as if crouching, springs

      to life.