Cats and Dogs

If cats are all about catastrophe,

Katabasis, a journey long through Dis,

Where lazy night and sleep and dreams agree

To tell their winter tales to Anubis,

Then dogs are all about the coming dawn,

And listen to the wind the whole long climb

Upon the day and stars and further on

To tell their summer tales to endless time.

I have a cat (I couldn’t have the other) –

He tells me when it’s twelve o’clock at night,

When he becomes my psychopomp and brother

And shows me my reflection in dim light.

Perhaps I could be ready for the stars

When Venus lies again with planet Mars.

Ice Age

I hear a lark ascending, close my eyes –

I open them again to gloom and rain;

Like shutters opened, closed, sunset, sunrise,

And then the dark, and then the light again.

Why do my days collapse within the hour?

What makes a night of day and day of night?

Is that the sun I see within the bower,

Or does the moon ascend from mind to sight?

I want it now, that age of ice foretold –

I want to laugh at winter and the dark –

I want to live a thousand years of cold

And while it bites recall that unseen lark.

So there it rises, cloud and midnight visible,

Sans sinking of the mind the sun finds risible.