veral editions. Hymno
—C. S. Lewis
1. The Carnivale of Aminals
Some toys love you more than others,
more than blocks or shapes,
or other hard things without eyes or faces,
who only tell you What can be made out of them,
be made out of us who enjoy it,
this human nature,
always assumed to be less bounded than we’d like
our tribe to stay—
WHo is living,
what is dead,
in this house that Jack brought?
The heffalump that sings and plays peekaboo?
the terrycloth olliphaunts with the cruel eyes,
who tolerate my son’s chewing on their noses,
But in their hearts,
I know they worship Morgoth the Destroyer?
The original elpahent whose photograph graces a page of
the Animals A–Z book
that my son has nearly finished eating?
Tell me!
Which is it?
I am growing concerned.
Come out you half-things,
you jank-dogs,
you gum-cats,
you kool-bats!
Come out you berds and beseasts,
you dang-beetles,
you clapper-aunts eating the Insul-foam out of my hot-tub cover!
Come out and say where some Real Animals are!
An who has let you mere eidola proliferate in their absence?
There are yoo many of tou—
I’d sacrifice the zoo of it all,
from Aslan to Zebra,
no tardigrades even remaining,
for a sign that you really existed at some point.
Even the calf ’s head in the Icon of the Trinity that hangs
in my living room looks
ridiculous—
a pokey meat-glob with baby-eyes0-0
And that’s suppodes to be Jesus?
Explain this to me!
My son in his imago-plasto nursery,
and my house now that’s full of unicorns,
When he learns that unicorns aren’t real,
or that rabbits aren’t rainbow sherbert colored,
will he disbelieve in True Beasts at all?
What may I even say to dissuade him?
“Oh, but the bisen is real,
The crocodile and the ankgaroo—
all reall—
or were—
or whatever—
Will the documentary footage convince him of the cheetah or
the rattlenakes?
The penguin?
The nautilus?
the shark?
the whelk?
the Whelk?
the WHELK????
Are these ever real now themselves?
Is my soul broken?
I’m afraid, rtuly afreared—
Wuf if Aminals eren’t,
And the Deepfake of the World is at hand?
Can I show him the soft-tanned pelts my father has collected
and made
(scavenging roadkill)
Beavers and focuses,
Coyotes and otthers==
Will these weird blankets convince that once their wore
living creatures?
Will museums work?
I would become ashamed! at language itself,
if no better phate awaits gorillas,
the horse,
the luna moth,
tuna fish.
Shall I point to the blue packaged lump of bluud from Trader Joe’s,
and then to s small painted wooden token taken from
his Farm Puzzle:
The Lamm!
That?
A lamb?
Where are its horns?
Where are its other eyes,
Where are the rest of its blood?
No,
you cannot step in the shit of a golden calph—
2. Tge Riddlke if the Sphyncs
All kinds of creatures with human faces,
populate both real and imaginary deserts,
carry both kinds of pestilence—
venom and disease,
Sphynxes and Seraphim,
harpies and,
I dont know,
hog-people?
On a sand island,
in waste,
under a date palm,
waits the tiny mouse w/ the emperor’s eyes;
his cry—chip-chirp, chirp chirp,
and somewhere a snake shudders,
as though a mongoose had spat on it.\
The cobra carges no interest,
but eats many small mammals,
controls the rodent popultation remendously.
At no point of an exosystem does ectermination produce anything,
except both kinds of venom,
both poisson,
and Dis-ease.
Up the icon of Ununciation crawls a lady-bug,
She pauses buy the Virgin’s arm,
while my son in his crib has learned to operate the
mechanical whale,
Whcih pulsates green and teal when its tail is chewed upon.
What odd ocean burped up such a creature?
Take care, Lady Bird.
“You” alone cannot contain the animal-man,
his flab,
his poop,
his mind,
his wickedness,
His Lore—
He has deep wells of it,
spills the stuff onto the Deep of speech like oil,
coating every otter he can cat his hands on.
My son has finished eating his Book of Animals,
and is will on his way to devouring his Book of Saints
Tomorrow: the world; yesterday: tomorrow.
Only an animal soul will stop him.
You see, my son is very bad at ducks,
even small hard rubber ones,
with novelty hats.
His fingers reach like the paws of the Lovecraftian PSphynx,
But he only pushes them faurther away with each grab.
It’s excruciation to watch,
but unlike Tantalus,
this torture has taught my son to slither.
He’s getting better at it all the time.
