On The Path

[guangdian 0]

On the PathThree times lately on my walk in the hills behind the houseI have come across an elderly man in company with a lolloping dog:A youngster, white and yellow like a polar bear, mild-eyed and foolish,Coming back repeatedly from short cuts into the undergrowth for pretend discipline and conversation ?Mild ironies at his expense, he seems to understand, answered by urine on the creosote bush.These are real hills, and the man looks frail. How much medicationAre the two of us taking? No chemical damper needed, it seems, on the dog?sAnxiety about whatever it is lurking inside the chrysalis ?White and yellow like a burnt manuscript ? of an owl?s efficient turd.Easy to guess what the old man and I most envyIn the snuffling going on at the side of the path.Not the creature?s inquisitiveness, precisely (the two of us still want to see the Taj Mahal),Not its optimism, not its wild overestimate of the size of things,Not even doom taking the form of a picked-over skeleton;No, more the dog?s certainty that we and our kind have uses,And, above all, his lack of concern with the childhood ?Charts of the planets, lost balls, broken windows, hot drinks in bed ?We agree, with a glance, passed us by.T. J. ClarkThe Threepenny Review100th IssueWinter 2005