The Minimum Circus

FOR MARY DOYLE SPRINGER

            From the marks on their coats

        and the unambiguous wag

            of their tails as they sniff

        each other, one can see they are

            related—all the dogs

in our neighborhood circling a quay

            in the port, awaiting

        the circus pushcart carrying

            four dazed French house cats, who,

        unperplexed, crawl through tubes, jump hoops,

            balance on a high wire,

and ride an irritable goat bareback.

            The sweet ringmaster, who

        has no teeth, wears Cézanne’s straw hat

            and borrowed evening tails.

        It has taken him years to stage

            the flawless tigres act.

He has a distant, sympathetic heart.

            When Madame Pompinette,

        a pretty white thing, is let out

            of her little wood box,

        she does ballerina stretches,

            carefully licking each

murderous claw, making the dogs go wild.

            Backed up on their haunches,

        with pointed ears, they do not hear

            moody Debussy as

        Madame crosses a perilous

            clothesline to her platform

and relaxes. Welcome as tears boldly

            shed, the cats transcend class.

        Coming no less from Arab shacks

            on vineyards than from big

        summer châteaux, the hounds escape

            their odious lot,

drinking and drinking in the cats, who eat

            sardines and seem to laugh.

        When the ringmaster’s hat is passed,

            he cracks his lion-whip

        like Mallarmé yearning for some

            daring, inward effect.

My ten-franc piece hardly speaks to the cats,

            who repose with laissez-faire

        expressions, like humans given

            a mask, willing to tell

        the truth of their predicament,

            as if to say to me:

“This is what life is supposed to be.”