what animal
TRANSCRIPT
University of Northern Iowa
What AnimalAuthor(s): Elizabeth BartlettSource: The North American Review, Vol. 254, No. 4 (Winter, 1969), p. 32Published by: University of Northern IowaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25117031 .
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into the beam of the flashlight. She placed the shotgun carefully on the verandah railing and walked down the
steps slowly and right down the path until she stood a few feet away, still holding the beam of her flashlight on his face.
She stared at the body a full minute and said "Yes." Then she nodded and said "Yes" again and added "That's
Raymond all right" like someone viewing wreckage and went back to the house to telephone.
The next morning when the neighbors came and sat
in her cool shaded living room drinking tea or dandelion wine she said, "A wedding and a death all in one night."
"Yes," they said. "Joy and sorrow hand in hand. You
don't know what'U happen next."
"I could've just loosed the dogs to hold him down," she said, "but somebody poisoned them. We found them both dead on the driveway when the wedding broke up last night." She passed around a heaping tray of cookies
and cakes left over from the reception. Taking a large slice of pink cake herself, she sat down on a chair to eat it. "I thought it was a stranger prowling around in the
night, maybe a burglar."
They nibbled on their cakes and said "Of course" and nodded. "You couldn't know."
"I'm getting older," she said. "An old lady alone can't
take no chances."
ELIZABETH BARTLETT
WHAT ANIMAL
They start to vegetate before the cells are green ;
before the bones can sprout
a root and send a leaf or stalk above the ground,
they sit and wait.
I see them sleep away the years like fruit left
to cool and dry, their seeds
unused until the next
ripening. Asleep,
they wait for day.
Conditioned to the night, how quietly they speed the slow hours to an end,
as though to end the dream
by dreaming and waken
to new light.
What animal would die
before it dies, is dead, before its eyes despair as, with a parting breath, it turns from sun and air
with a terrible cry?
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