The censure of a taste American To celebrate your courage, wit, I write you down what here is writ: A referee, a man! A judge who loved the game and whose decree Had no taint on it, was more pure Than much of our judicature, Of every knavery free. And what is here to shock or shake such nerves As children’s are, delicate women’s? There goes the short hook of Fitzsimmons, And Thorne a moment swerves, Then topples over, and lies quiet while You count from one slowly to nine. And Thorne lies there without a sign Of life, but with a smile After a time gets up, and reels across The ring to his own corner, there Flops wobbly in his corner’s chair, And wonders at his loss. While full ten thousand cheer, and watch you shake The master hand, the general’s. Such was our sport at Tattersall’s Before the Puritan rake Combed through the city. Now the sport is dead, And you are dust these several years. And we who drift to stale careers, And live along and tread The old deserted ways we loved and knew, Ask sometimes how it was a cough Could seize upon you, take you off-- A lad as strong as you? MY DOG PONTO 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.