O little emperor with no orb,
conqueror without country, .....
tiny tiger of the living room,
posing four delicate feet on the ground
sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,
because everything is unclean
for the cat’s immaculate foot.
The above is an excerpt from Pablo Neruda's poem Ode to the Cat (Oda al Gato) which was sent to me by Narayan Acharya. Despite a severe allergy to cats, fortified with anti-histamines, Narayan entertains his neighbor's cat Sammy in his home. The full poem below the fold.
Ode to the Cat
Pablo Neruda
The animals were imperfect,
long in the tail, sad in the head.
Little by little they began
to compose themselves,
making themselves a landscape,
acquiring polka dots, grace and flight.
But the cat, only the cat,
appeared whole and proud:
born completely finished,
he walked alone and knew what he wanted.
Man wants to be a fish and a bird,
the snake would rather have wings,
the dog is a baffled lion,
the engineer wants to be a poet,
the fly strives to be a swallow,
the poet tries to imitate the fly,
but the cat wants only to be a cat,
and every cat is a cat
from his whiskers to his tail,
from his instinct to a live rat,
from the night to his golden eyes.
There is no coherence like his
neither the moon nor the flower
is put together as is he:
he is one single thing
like the sun, or a topaz,
and the supple line of his contour
is firm and delicate
as the line of the prow of a ship.
His yellow eyes allow a single slot
to expel the coinage of the night.
O little emperor with no orb,
conqueror without country,
tiny tiger of the living room,
nuptial sultan of the sky
and erotic rooftops,
you reclaim the wind of love
in the open air when you walk by,
posing four delicate feet on the ground
sniffing, mistrustful of everything on earth,
because everything is unclean
for the cat’s immaculate foot.
O fierce independent of the house,
proud remnant of night,
lazy, gymnastic and aloof,
most profound cat,
secret police of the neighborhood,
emblem of a disappeared velvet,
surely there is no enigma in your manners,
perhaps you’re not mysterious,
everyone knows that you belong
to the least mysterious resident,
perhaps they all believe they are
masters, owners, uncles of cats,
comrades, colleagues,
disciples or friends
of their cat.
Not I.
I don’t subscribe to it.
I don’t know the cat.
Everything else I know -- life and its archipelago,
the sea and the incalculable city,
botany, the pistil in all its variations,
the plus and the minus of maths,
the volcanic funnels of the world,
the unreal rind of the crocodile,
the unsung kindness of firemen,
the blue atavism of priests --
but I cannot decipher a cat.
My reason lapses with his indifference,
his eyes have numbers of gold.
How true! I'm always amazed at how clean cats keep themselves.
Posted by: James Winsoar | December 17, 2008 at 03:47 PM