14. you bet you animal

The animals you bet









Animals always so busy

Their busyness dizzying.



I told my family I’d only come if carried

But when we arrived at the foot of the scalinata

They left me slumped in my wheelbarrow

Wrapped in my blankets

Not for lack of charity as sundry a tourist must’ve thought

But because they were fed up

With my childish attitude.



I got up to the dismay of the charitable ones

And took the little wheelbarrow where I erst was crammed

And filled it up with clayish mud

The result of last night pouring over the seven hills

Surrounding the city.



I brought the mud into the riverbank

And emptied it there on the scant strand

Then I gave away the quaint wheelbarrow to some ragamuffins

Who were elated with my gift

On the shingle of the shore its wheels rang

And its metallic body boomed.



Next I went to see my friend’s little gipsy dog

And took it for an eventful stroll along the rear

Of the row of the fairgrounds permanent shacks

Fronting the river.



Behind Madam Magician’s gaudy shed

We met a little witchy cat

Boozy and breezy and so cute

With whom my gipsy gray doggy

Both played and slightly fought

In a deep muddy puddle

They wallowed and frolicked

In the end both were dressed in slime.



We went up to a ramshackle badly leaning faucet

And washed away the muck

Luckily it was a warm afternoon.



Now we encountered a makeshift memorial

That had under the cross two tablets

One with solemn easy verses

The other with some cartoons by a skilled hand lovely made

About a soldier who in spite of having had

A quite ordinary youth

Had to go down in battle at such a tender age.



We went back a bit morose into my friend’s shop

He said I didn’t know you had taken the dog

I said You were so busy at the time

And now I went behind the counter

And prepared myself something to eat

For which I even paid

A client came in

He had a thick dog on a leash and on a little string

A painted rodent

I said to him Is that a rodent or a very small dog?

He said A rodent

A fashionable rodent if you please

Its pelt has been shampooed

Barbered and colored

As you see in orange and green

And do you know that I was asked by phone

By so-and-so

(I said I know him!)

To write an article about that type of rodent

And its domesticity for his magazine?

I said He never pays

Does he?

The client said He did though very little

I said This is how he became so rich

Damned impresario

By not paying his flunkies

Didn’t I know!



The animals meanwhile were going hither and thither

The shop was alive with the movement of animals

The shack

The fairgrounds

The earth itself

The universe loved it.