Dog / Anger, Cattle, and Achilles

            Reading the poem “Dog” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919–present) I couldn’t help but wonder what it would be like – being a dog – trotting in the streets of New York City.  Would it feel small, and like being a child? Would everything be in black and white, as veterinarians used to believe, or would there be some color as new studies suggest? And would politicians look like hydrants?

            “The dog trots freely in the street

            and sees reality

            and the things he sees

            are bigger than himself

            and the things he sees

            are his reality”

            I have an 11-year-old Maltese, and whenever I walk him I never seize to be amused at how eagerly he smells other dogs’ markings before he makes his own. The urgency he does it with is just like people reading headlines on their electronic devices. I imagine my Maltese is getting his news, and important messages from other dogs through his sense of smell, or maybe even notes-to-self he left previously.

            “The dog trots freely in the street

            and the things he smells

            smell something like himself.”

           

            Ferlinghetti makes a political stab through the dog’s point of view. He points out Congressman Clyde Doyle, a Democrat who was a U.S. Representative from California, and served on McCarthy’s House of Un-American Activities, which was an anti-Communist witch hunt, during the time the poem was written.

            “And he goes past the Romeo Ravioli Factory

            and past Coit’s Tower

            and past Congressman Doyle

            He’s afraid of Coit’s Tower

            but he’s not afraid of Congressman Doyle

            although what he hears is very discouraging

            very depressing

            very absurd”

            Listing Doyle next to Coit’s Tower, a monument that looks like a giant phallus, is funny, especially with the dog being afraid of the giant phallus, but not Doyle, a presumably small phallus. Ferlinghetti served in the Navy during World War II, but became a pacifist after visiting the ruins of Nagasaki after the Atom Bomb was dropped there. His political criticism is shaped by the reality of what he’d seen politics achieve.

            “Congressman Doyle is just another

            fire hydrant

            to him.” 

            Reading the poem “Anger, Cattle, and Achilles” by Gary Snyder (1930–present) I couldn’t help but wonder if some of my friends have thought of me in the same way Snyder talks about his.

            “Two of my best friends quit speaking

            one said his wrath was like that of Achilles.”

            I have two best friends since high school, and I’ve had more than one falling out with each.  I’m currently on good terms and in touch with both. There have always been mutual friends between my best friends and I, and these mutual friends were usually aware of the periods when my best friends and I quit speaking.

            “The three of us had traveled on the desert,

            Awakened to bird song and sunshine under ironwoods

                                    in a wadi south of the border.”  

            Throughout the years my best friends and I, with mutual friends, have had unforgettable experiences.  In high school, we went to night clubs that no longer exist, getting in with fake IDs, and once on Thanksgiving almost got arrested for drinking on the stoop of an East Village building where Madonna is said to have lived when she first came to New York. After high school saw the Pixies live in New York, traveled to Las Vegas, and woke up to college bands singing outside my best friend’s friend’s window for Bacchanalia at Sarah Lawrence.

            Sometimes when my best friends and I had quit speaking, I’d run into our mutual friends and vent my wrath to them. Maybe that’s what all true friendships end up going through, because once the wrath subsides, you learn to forgive yourself and then you forgive the other. As you get older, you realize that friends whom you know and who know you are the most important thing in life.

            “I met the other lately in the far back of a bar

            musicians playing near the window and he

            sweetly told me ‘listen to that music.

            The self we hold so dear will soon be gone.’”