Sic Transit

Michele Tosini (1503–1577)

 

 

Ginger

 

Am I the only one

                           watching

my neighbour’s

                      frolicksome goat,

Ginger,

            tied to a pecan tree?

All morning

                  it has been examining

an empty bushel basket

                                  and has lifted

one leg delicately

                            like a circus horse

as if to roll it,

                           but whether to do that

or to butt it

                     with its small horns,

that is the question.

                                 Not of great moment,

no signing of the Charter,

                                        but like air music,

quickest of the elements.

                                       Towards which I leaped!

In form

            its own grace,

appearing,

                as it passed

in retrospect, classical.

The real goat stayed,

                                 imperturbable,

the body solid

                      as a four-square loom

and delivered me

                         from abstraction.

His coloring,

                     greyish-soft shades,

their dark and light

                        passing into each other

as in an antique rubbing.

I now found myself

                            sitting so near,

my shade,

               as in the Inferno,

sensed his,

                  but he gave no sign

of my presence,

                        even when I stroked him

and my heart leaped

                              at the gentle fleece,

too fine for a hard life.

He continued nibbling

                                 on a dry bush.

I would not have believed

                                       unconcern

could bolster the man in me

                                          and be so enduring.

Sic transit, not caring

                                    whether it is recognized,

The Divine

                (from another age).

He was poking

                     into the underbush now

and reached across my head

                                        for the small spiny twigs.

At that the phase

                           changed

and a sensuous trembling

                                     hung in the air,

as when a bee is about

                                  to descend

on blossoming clover,

                                 and I

felt myself being pulled

                                     as by a line

from the invisible

                            other side

to enter goathood,

                            deeper than sight.

 

Carl Rakosi (November 6, 1903 – June 25, 2004)