English Cocker: Old and Blind by Robert Penn Warren
by Shep
(Hacienda Hts. CA)
With what painful deliberation he comes down the stair,
At the edge of each step one paw suspended in air,
And distrust. Does he thus stand on a final edge
Of the world? Sometimes he stands thus, and will not budge,
With a choking soft whimper, while monstrous blackness is whirled
Inside his head, and outside too, the world
Whirling in blind vertigo. But if your hand
Merely touches his head, old faith comes flooding back--and
The paw descends, His trust is infinite
In you, who are, in his eternal night,
only a frail scent subject to the whim
Of wind, or only a hand held close to him
With a dog biscuit, or, in a sudden burst
Of temper, the force that jerks that goddamned, accurst
little brute off your bed. But remember how you last saw
Him hesitate in his whirling dark, one paw
Suspended above the abyss at the edge of the stair,
And remember that musical whimper, and how, then aware
Of a sudden sweet heart-stab, you knew in him
The kinship of all flesh defined by a halting paradigm.
