I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says <br />that animals have no need of speech and Nature <br />abhors the superfluous. My cat is fluent. He <br />converses when he wants with me. To speak <br /> <br />is natural. And whales and wolves I’ve heard <br />in choral soundings of the sea and air <br />know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs <br />my mind and heart—they touch the soul. Here <br /> <br />Dante’s religion that would set Man apart <br />damns the effluence of our life from us <br />to build therein its powerhouse. <br /> <br />It’s in his animal communication Man is <br />true, immediate, and <br />in immediacy, Man is all animal. <br /> <br />His senses quicken in the thick of the symphony, <br />old circuits of animal rapture and alarm, <br />attentions and arousals in which an identity rearrives. <br />He hears <br />particular voices among <br />the concert, the slightest <br />rustle in the undertones, <br />rehearsing a nervous aptitude <br />yet to prove his. He sees the flick <br />of significant red within the rushing mass <br />of ruddy wilderness and catches the glow <br />of a green shirt <br />to delite him in a glowing field of green <br />—it speaks to him— <br />and in the arc of the spectrum color <br />speaks to color. <br />The rainbow articulates <br />a promise he remembers <br />he but imitates <br />in noises that he makes, <br />this speech in every sense <br />the world surrounding him. <br />He picks up on the fugitive tang of mace <br />amidst the savory mass, <br />and taste in evolution is an everlasting key. <br />There is a pun of scents in what makes sense. <br /> <br />Myrrh it may have been, <br />the odor of the announcement that filld the house. <br /> <br />He wakes from deepest sleep <br />upon a distant signal and waits <br />as if crouching, springs to life.<br /><br />Robert Duncan<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-little-language/
