A Tall Melancholic Man Contemplates a Pekinese
Oh, most curious this of anything
he has lately seen, this creature shuffling towards him
along the corridor, pausing routinely to sniff the carpet,
then yanking itself to an abrupt halt
to bristle with, it would appear, irritation
or is it the labour of that over-ripened heart
the small body cannot quite contain?
The man can almost hear the thunderous heartbeat
filling the hallway where he has been asked to wait
for only a minute but which keeps
expanding until both man and Pekinese seem
eternally suspended inside it.
Of late there has been much to regard
through the narrow lens of his exquisite gloom,
but this perambulating gold cushion, tasselled,
with legs bent like a footstool,
to curb the impulse to wander too far,
sneezing into life with its flat face
not designed for breathing and boiled eyes,
beyond expectation, most regal,
takes the biscuit. It really does.
The man’s melancholy weighs heavy on him today.
His soul is a whole sky to keep steady,
his feet large with gloom, expanding like shadows
towards the nose of the Pekinese,
wrinkling now with interest and for the first time
looking up. The eyes of dog and man meet
and lock and for both there is a recognition.
The dog can see
what it is the man is enveloped by,
the shadowy figures that cling and cleave
to him and is ready, the man perceives,
to scare away these demons, tear at their heels,
run them ragged, chase them until the end
of time, and dispatch them into the abyss.
Only waiting now for the command.
Page(s) 22
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