Little black snub-nosed bitch with a shoved-out jaw

  And a wrinkled reproachful look;

  Little black female pup, sort of French bull, they say,

  With bits of brindle coming through, like rust, to show

  you’re not pure;

  Not pure, Bibbles,

  Bubsey, bat-eared dog;

  Not black enough!

  First live thing I’ve “owned” since the lop-eared rabbits

  when I was a lad,

  And those over-prolific white mice, and Adolf, and Rex

  whom I didn’t own.

  And even now, Bibbles, little Ma’am, it’s you who appro —

  priated me, not I you.

  As Benjamin Franklin appropriated Providence to his

  purposes.

  Oh Bibbles, black little bitch

  I’d never have let you appropriate me, had I known.

  I never dreamed, till now, of the awful time the Lord must

  have, “owning” humanity.

  Especially democratic live-by-love humanity.

  Oh Bibbles, oh Pips, oh Pipsey

  You little black love-bird!

  Don’t you love everybody!

  Just everybody.

  You love ‘em all.

  Believe in the One Identity, don’t you,

  You little Walt-Whitmanesque bitch?

  First time I lost you in Taos plaza,

  And found you after endless chasing,

  Came upon you prancing round the corner in exuberant,

  bibbling affection

  After the black-green skirts of a yellow-green old Mexican

  woman

  Who hated you, and kept looking round at you and cursing

  you in a mutter,

  While you pranced and bounced with love of her, you

  indiscriminating animal,

  All your wrinkled miserere Chinese black little face

  beaming

  And your black little body bouncing and wriggling

  With indiscriminate love, Bibbles;

  I had a moment’s pure detestation of you.

  As I rushed like an idiot round the corner after you

  Yelling: Pips! Pips! Bibbles!

  I’ve had moments of hatred of you since,

  Loving everybody!

  “To you, whoever you are, with endless embrace!” —

  That’s you, Pipsey,

  With your imbecile bit of a tail in a love-flutter.

  You omnipip.

  Not that you’re merely a softy, oh dear me no.

  You know which side your bread is buttered.

  You don’t care a rap for anybody.

  But you love lying warm between warm human thighs,

  indiscriminate,

  And you love to make somebody love you, indiscriminate,

  You love to lap up affection, to wallow in it,

  And then turn tail to the next comer, for a new dollop.

  And start prancing and licking and cuddling again, indis —

  criminate.

  Oh yes, I know your little game.

  Yet you’re so nice,

  So quick, like a little black dragon.

  So fierce, when the coyotes howl, barking like a whole

  little lion, and rumbling,

  And starting forward in the dusk, with your little black fur

  all bristling like plush

  Against those coyotes, who would swallow you like an oyster.

  And in the morning, when the bedroom door is opened,

  Rushing in like a little black whirlwind, leaping straight as

  an arrow on the bed at the pillow

  And turning the day suddenly into a black tornado of

  joie de vivre, Chinese dragon.

  So funny

  Lobbing wildly through deep snow like a rabbit,

  Hurtling like a black ball through the snow,

  Champing it, tossing a mouthful,

  Little black spot in the landscape!

  So absurd

  Pelting behind on the dusty trail when the horse sets off

  home at a gallop:

  Left in the dust behind like a dust-ball tearing along

  Coming up on fierce little legs, tearing fast to catch up, a

  real little dust-pig, ears almost blown away,

  And black eyes bulging bright in a dust-mask

  Chinese-dragon-wrinkled, with a pink mouth grinning, under

  jaw shoved out

  And white teeth showing in your dragon-grin as you race,

  you split-face,

  Like a trundling projectile swiftly whirling up,

  Cocking your eyes at me as you come alongside, to see if

  I’m I on the horse,

  And panting with that split grin,

  All your game little body dust-smooth like a little pig,

  poor Pips.

  Plenty of game old spirit in you, Bibbles.

  Plenty of game old spunk, little bitch.

  How you hate being brushed with the boot-brush, to brush

  all that dust out of your wrinkled face.

  Don’t you?

  How you hate being made to look undignified. Ma’am;

  How you hate being laughed at, Miss Superb!

  Blackberry face!

  Plenty of conceit in you.

  Unblemished belief in your own perfection

  And utter lovableness, you ugly-mug;

  Chinese puzzle-face,

  Wrinkled underhung physiog that looks as if it had done

  with everything,

  Through with everything.

  Instead of which you sit there and roll your head like a

  canary

  And show a tiny bunch of white teeth in your underhung

  blackness,

  Self-conscious little bitch,

  Aiming again at being loved.

  Let the merest scallywag come to the door and you leap

  your very dearest-love at him,

  As if now, at last, here was the one you finally loved,

  Finally loved;

  And even the dirtiest scallywag is taken in,

  Thinking: This dog sure has taken a fancy to me.

  You miserable little bitch of love-tricks,

  I know your game.

  Me or the Mexican who comes to chop wood

  All the same,

  All humanity is jam to you.

  Everybody so dear, and yourself so ultra-beloved

  That you have to run out at last and eat filth,

  Gobble up filth, you horror, swallow utter abomination and

  fresh-dropped dung.

  You stinker.

  You worse than a carrion-crow.

  Reeking dung-mouth.

  You love-bird.

  Reject nothing, sings Walt Whitman.

  So you, you go out at last and eat the unmentionable,

  In your appetite for affection.

  And then you run in to vomit it in my house!

  I get my love back.

  And I have to clean up after you, filth which even blind

  Nature rejects

  From the pit of your stomach;

  But you, you snout-face, you reject nothing, you merge so

  much in love

  You must eat even that.

  Then when I dust you a bit with a juniper twig

  You run straight away to live with somebody else,

  Fawn before them, and love them as if they were the ones

  you had really loved all along.

  And they’re taken in.

  They feel quite tender over you, till you play the same trick

  on them, dirty bitch.

  Fidelity! Loyalty! Attachment!

  Oh, these are abstractions to your nasty little belly.

  You must always be a-waggle with LOVE.

  Such a waggle of love you can hardly distinguish one human

  from another.

  You love one after another, on one condition, that each

  one loves you most.

  Democratic little bull-bitch, dirt-eating little swine.

  But now, my lass, you’ve got your Nemesis on your track,

  Now you’ve come sex-alive, and the great ranch-dogs are all

  after you.

  They’re after what they can get, and don’t you turn tail!

  You loved ‘em all so much before, didn’t you, loved ‘em

  indiscriminate.

  You don’t love ‘em now.

  They want something of you, so you squeak and come

  pelting indoors.

  Come pelting to me, now the other folk have found you out,

  and the dogs are after you.

  Oh yes, you’re found out. I heard them kick you out of the

  ranch house.

  Get out, you little, soft fool!!

  And didn’t you turn your eyes up at me then?

  And didn’t you cringe on the floor like any inkspot!

  And crawl away like a black snail!

  And doesn’t everybody loathe you then!

  And aren’t your feelings violated, you high bred little love —

  bitch!

  For you’re sensitive,

  In many ways very finely bred.

  But bred in conceit that the world is all for love

  Of you, my bitch: till you get so far you eat filth.

  Fool, in spite of your pretty ways, and quaint, know all,

  wrinkled old aunty’s face.

  So now, what with great Airedale dogs,

  And a kick or two,

  And a few vomiting bouts,

  And a juniper switch,

  You look at me for discrimination, don’t you?

  Look up at me with misgiving in your bulging eyes,

  And fear in the smoky whites of your eyes, you nigger;

  And you’re puzzled,

  You think you’d better mind your P’s and Q’s for a bit.

  Your sensitive love-pride being all hurt.

  All right, my little bitch.

  You learn loyalty rather than loving,

  And I’ll protect you.

  Lobo.

  MOUNTAIN LION

  CLIMBING through the January snow, into the Lobo canyon

  Dark grow the spruce-trees, blue is the balsam, water sounds

  still unfrozen, and the trail is still evident.

  Men!

  Two men!

  Men! The only animal in the world to fear!

  They hesitate.

  We hesitate.

  They have a gun.

  We have no gun.

  Then we all advance, to meet.

  Two Mexicans, strangers, emerging out of the dark and snow

  and inwardness of the Lobo valley.

  What are they doing here on this vanishing trail?

  What is he carrying?

  Something yellow.

  A deer?

  Qué tiene, amigo?

  León —

  He smiles, foolishly, as if he were caught doing wrong.

  And we smile, foolishly, as if we didn’t know.

  He is quite gentle and dark-faced.

  It is a mountain lion,

  A long, long slim cat, yellow like a lioness.

  Dead.

  He trapped her this morning, he says, smiling foolishly.

  Lift up her face,

  Her round, bright face, bright as frost.

  Her round, fine-fashioned head, with two dead ears;

  And stripes in the brilliant frost of her face, sharp, fine

  dark rays,

  Dark, keen, fine rays in the brilliant frost of her face.

  Beautiful dead eyes.

  Hermoso es!

  They go out towards the open;

  We go on into the gloom of Lobo.

  And above the trees I found her lair,

  A hole in the blood-orange brilliant rocks that stick up, a

  little cave.

  And bones, and twigs, and a perilous ascent.

  So, she will never leap up that way again, with the yellow

  flash of a mountain lion’s long shoot!

  And her bright striped frost face will never watch any more,

  out of the shadow of the cave in the blood-orange

  rock,

  Above the trees of the Lobo dark valley-mouth!

  Instead, I look out.

  And out to the dim of the desert, like a dream, never real;

  To the snow of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the ice of

  the mountains of Picoris,

  And near across at the opposite steep of snow, green trees

  motionless standing in snow, like a Christmas toy.

  And I think in this empty world there was room for me

  and a mountain lion.

  And I think in the world beyond, how easily we might

  spare a million or two of humans

  And never miss them.

  Yet what a gap in the world, the missing white frost face

  of that slim yellow mountain lion!

  Lobo.

  THE RED WOLF

  OVER the heart of the west, the Taos desert

  Circles an eagle,

  And it’s dark between me and him.

  The sun, as he waits a moment, huge and liquid

  Standing without feet on the rim of the far-off mesa

  Says: Look for a last long time then! Look! Look well! I

  am going.

  So he pauses and is beholden, and straightway is gone.

  And the Indian, in a white sheet

  Wrapped to the eyes, the sheet bound close on his brows,

  Stands saying: See, I’m invisible!

  Behold how you can’t behold me!

  The invisible in its shroud!

  Now that the sun has gone, and the aspen leaves

  And the cotton-wood leaves are fallen, as good as fallen,

  And the ponies are in corral,

  And it’s night.

  Why, more has gone than all these;

  And something has come.

  A red wolf stands on the shadow’s dark red rim.

  Day has gone to dust on the sage-grey desert

  Like a white Christus fallen to dust from a cross;

  To dust, to ash, on the twilit floor of the desert.

  And a black crucifix like a dead tree spreading wings;

  Maybe a black eagle with its wings out

  Left lonely in the night

  In a sort of worship.

  And coming down upon us, out of the dark concave

  Of the eagle’s wings,

  And the coffin-like slit where the Indians’ eyes are,

  And the absence of cotton-wood leaves, or of aspen,

  Even the absence of dark-crossed donkeys:

  Come tall old demons, smiling

  The Indian smile,

  Saying: How do you do, you pale-face?

  I am very well, old demon.

  How are you?

  Call me Harry if you will,

  Call me Old Harry says he.

  Or the abbreviation of Nicolas,

  Nick. Old Nick, maybe.

  Well, you’re a dark old demon,

  And I’m a pale-face like a homeless dog

  That has followed the sun from the dawn through the east

  Trotting east and east and east till the sun himself went home,

  And left me homeless here in the dark at your door.

  How do you think we’ll get on,

  Old demon, you and I?

  You and I, you pale-face,

  Pale-face you and I

  Don’t get on.

  Mightn’t we try?

  Where’s your God, you white one?

  Where’s your white God?

  He fell to dust as the twilight fell,

  Was fume as I trod

  The last step out of the east.

  Then you’re a lost white dog of a pale-face,

  And the day’s now dead. . . .

  Touch me carefully, old father,

  My beard is red.

  Thin red wolf of a pale-face,

  Thin red wolf, go home.

  I have no home, old father,

  That’s why I come.

  We take no hungry stray from the pale-face . . .

  Father, you are not asked.

  I am come. I am here. The red-dawn-wolf

  Sniffs round your place.

  Lifts up his voice and howls to the walls of the pueblo,

  Announcing he’s here.

  The dogs of the dark pueblo

  Have long fangs . . .

  Has the red wolf trotted east and east and east

  From the far, far other end of the day

  To fear a few fangs?

  Across the pueblo river

  That dark old demon and I

  Thus say a few words to each other

  And wolf, he calls me, and red.

  I call him no names.

  He says, however, he is Star-Road.

  I say, he can go back the same gait.

  As for me . . .

  Since I trotted at the tail of the sun as far as ever the

  creature went west,

  And lost him here,

  I’m going to sit down on my tail right here

  And wait for him to come back with a new story.

  I’m the red wolf, says the dark old father.

  All right, the red dawn wolf I am.

  Taos.

  GHOSTS

  MEN IN NEW MEXICO

  MOUNTAINS blanket-wrapped

  Round a white hearth of desert —

  While the sun goes round

  And round and round the desert,

  The mountains never get up and walk about.

  They can’t, they can’t wake.

  They camped and went to sleep