Cave Canem

Importuned through the mails, accosted over the telephone,
overtaken by running footsteps, caught by the sleeve, the
servant of strangers,
While amidst the haste and confusion lover and friend quietly
step into the unreachable past,
I throw bright time to chickens in an untidy yard.

Through foul timidity, through a gross indisposition to excite
the ill-will of even the most negligible,
Disliking voices raised in anger, faces with no love in them,
I avoid the looming visitor,
Flee him adroitly around corners,
Hating him, wishing him well;

Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise
true:
That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;
And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the
sonnet cools
Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies
As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since
I was a child.

Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,
There may be.
But not enough to keep a bird alive.

There is a flaw amounting to a fissure
In such behaviour.