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Before the musical, "Cats", was T.S. Eliot's poem about
cats, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, in which
he advises us to give each cat three names. Eliot himself
had how many cats? The other day I came across these lyrics
from an anonymous Asia Minor mini-play performed Mac
Wellman-style, with puppets. Here is a rough
translation:
Mousa is the queen of the house
Mousa is a mouser she likes to catch mice
She thinks it's the spice
for her meals of cockroaches and moths
Mousa takes tea in the T.V. room
Mousa goes to school on the patio
Mousa gets drunk outside the house
Mousa wakes up on Tuesday night, she thinks she's just been born.
And another song that makes up the musical:
Phoebe is as sleepy
as a weeping willow
She won't put her head on
anyone's pillow. She likes her claws... sharp
for when she's sleeping, she plays the kitty-cat harp.
When she's sleeping, she dreams of the dark
deep in
kitty cat space.
Cats have long been the subject of poems and plays. If
you read the first Chapter, you know we have already
mentioned Christopher Smart and his cat Jeoffrey. Cats
appeared frequently on Egyptian tablets, and were often the
subject of paintings and sculptures. The cat was a god, or
at least there was a god with a cat face, who is called, in
one fragment, "The Swallower of Millions." Perhaps this is
why many have exhibited a strong fear of felines, as
evidenced in horror movies like "The Cat Came Back" (not the
Dr. Suess-ish version).
It has recently been discovered that even the least
developed of all mammals, the duck-billed platypus, which
lives in the rivers of Australia, experiences REM sleep and,
therefore, dreams. Besides milk-lines and live young,
Mammalia share this feature: we dream. But what about the
leaf that is acting like a small chameleon in "Les
Etiquettes Jaune"? Or does a lizard (dream)? I didn't think
so, but see Alice Notley's poem below.
Among bestiaries, there is Reed Bye's book, The Heart's
Bestiary, and among geneses, there is the one from the
Kato Indians, excerpted here:
Fish were not they say. Deer were not they say. Grizzlies were not they say. Panthers were not they say. Wolves were not they say. People were washed away they say. Coyotes were not then they say. Ravens were not then they say.
Herons, woodpeckers, wrens, hummingbirds, otters,
coyotes, ravens, jack-rabbits, grey squirrels, the
long-eared mice, and also the wind and snow and rain and
thunder and clouds and stars are a part of the catalogue of
what was not, but was thought or made into being; for as we
dream up the world, we also dream up its creatures.
Lizard
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Closed eye and smile the desert lizard dreams of an ocean | |
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Through my dream's eye, he says, it's a white room where my | |
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tongue licks the sun |
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The lizard's eye pops out enlarging and luminous white | |
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What do I know? he says, except the beauty of the reptile face -- | |
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small scales the color of sand, all of us look the same, |
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and we look the same as the desert... But when we dream |
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sand is high foam, wet salt makes our scales even |
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rougher-- |
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The lizard speaking has turned white as salt, the lizard's | |
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eyes blue-black |
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Shadows of flowers saw, though there are no flowers here | |
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The lizard's smile is drawn on, says the lizard...We are very | |
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formal, in such dry heat our manners are sweet to us ... |
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At their center something intimate and empty rests |
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touching us constantly |
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In a slender shadow of a bush with small leaves, wait in order | |
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to move quickly |
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I know as much as you do, he says, a longing core of my | |
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manners, something not placed, loves me as I eat, |
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it is blind as death, night's heat is raw with its power |
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The lizard says my parents lover children friend are me -- | |
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my enemy's part of me |
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Calling me into my center -- As I'm stripped of lizard life | |
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my eye grows taller, hotter, and then beyond temperature -- |
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I was always dead, weren't you? |
Alice Notley
Thermophilic
heatwise
the kindness in batter
raises sweaters
piecemeal radiowave
standard, universe, at
the tone experience
spurts of starlight
an open burn
and thrust for velvet
germ floors
the probe wallows
five-hundred degrees
in thrives & home
runs, its molted feeds
the max and non
consensual viruses
born without fur
know no sun ex-
salt with ratios
the obscure rangers, soft
broods one-to-a-cell
surviving ovens
sit out on scurvy cliffs
warm to the signal
Jonathan Skinner
Hunt
Take 1 griffin
and weight of
claws, teeth
pound per hair,
integrate with
half duck,
feather, bill
divide the
wholeness
of numbers
into quail,
chase,
dozen
oz. of lead,
gold, the
transmutation
dilute to
spill of
robin's nest,
blue,
the viciousness
of seagull's
yellow eye,
the fox vivid
against gray
and green, the
hoof of horse,
hound,
poacher
and newt's
brain thinking
of next trans-
formation to
salamander to
gecko to
irradiation and
chromosone,
1 tooth, 1 claw
sticking in craw
the X the Y
the integer and
divisiveness
a detriment
in the negativity
of chart line
the graph, plotting
points to the
next uprise
of vegetable
the tomato
crossed to
black-eyed
sunflower
following
solar
radiation
and transgressing
into greenery
1770 miles
axis borderline
flow if X equals
fox and griffen
alienated
from chromosome
then Y is orbit
elliptical
an oval
orion
slung
with claw, tooth
medicine of hair
arrow sticking
out a perpidicular
line of
slaughter
of capture
elephants
near bones,
tusk no claw
look to star
and Z is
squared
a theorem
a strand
a mono-
culture
a tetris
dish
in midst
of string
alienation
from gene
the unicorn
the cave
shield
& spear
the flaked
point the
plotted line
Y is X
integer
theorem
and solution
the hunt.
Marcella Durand