A dog-lion’s haunched triangular fury
guards the dead. He says, ‘several things:
first I bite, then in death I guard you.’
‘Besides, I don’t want it,’ I said. ‘Then forgive me.’
‘I’ll guard my own death,’ I say. So then
he bites me. Meanwhile a little swooning
in the blood. I tell this dental fool,
‘I am the right, and fierce creature,
the insects gnaw my veins, my newly rived flesh,
I find the Jew in the scrolls, I nourish him,’
and I dispossess him like a father.
It is the crime: I lay two sandals down
as if it were my mind, its occupancy
for the foot that shudders fitting into it.
It is that gentlest act, I was given.
Shall I be nourished, in my giving?
Hearing a great beast cry,
I am called to account.
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