Dialogue One
Pavlov, that Russian …
Who wants to talk about Pavlov?
Not I.
I want to talk about us.
Pavlov loved to talk of the “cerebral hemispheres” …
Did he love?
Did that man love?
It’s a phrase that in English has a pleasant ring
If you let the meaning go, and the connotations.
The connotations in Pavlov are dogs, and a few cats,
With their cerebral hemispheres missing. Their presence is needed,
Pavlov showed.
And my presence.
Is my presence needed?
Yet he didn’t want the importance that he attached to them
To be taken out of lab context.
He was a physiologist, not a mind man. The word “mind”
He thought a distraction.
I feed the children, clean the kitchen,
Make the beds, water the plants,
Move the furniture, paper the walls.
Where am I in all this?
I am losing my mind.
First he performed a “minor operation.”
He moved the opening of the salivary duct from in to out.
Then he took the dogs and hung them in harnesses, loosely,
The rest is history.
Drop by drop he measured saliva. Twenty-five years.
Fifteen years.
Dialogue Two
The creatures in comedies are conventionally creatures of habit.
In the middle they stray from their habits, and that is a joke.
At the end they return, and that is happiness.
The joking and happiness cease when straying persists,
And that is tragedy. Blandly the genres affirm habits.
Blandly in genre, in habit
We sit dying.
The artist may go to his genre as to a lab,
Hang his bitch in a harness and other unspeakables.
Comes quitting time he goes home,
Frets not that his powers are overthrown,
And goes to his bed undisturbed to pick up his tyrannies
In the morning.
Let us talk about quitting time.
Shall we talk?
And other unspeakables?
The bitch hangs there all night, many nights, poor thing,
But when he is done with her,
When he cuts her down and pats her and opens the door,
She must out and bark and wag tail like the other dogs,
Or he’s hung, the artist.
Who’s in charge? Not he, not the lab,
But the other dogs.
Are you done with me?
Shall we talk? Shall we live?
And other unspeakables?
Could we live with the other dogs?
Dialogue Three
There’s a brook that I walk to daily,
The mind’s choice.
We could walk together.
When the mosquitoes let me, I stop at it.
I’m building a dam.
We could build together.
It’s two feet across.
I add a few stones each time.
I could add.
The water keeps going through it
As if it weren’t there,
But I keep at it,
Filling the crevices,
My mind’s dam.
Yours always, not ours.
The dam I don’t care for.
I’d not take it home.
The first chipmunk could have it.
All I want is to walk there,
Deliberately,
And pick up the stones,
And put in the stones,
And fill in the crevices,
I the determiner,
Tyrant of stones.
Am I a stone?
Dialogue Four
Let me tell you a story.
I feed the children, clean the kitchen,
Make the beds, water the plants …
Will you hear the story?
Will you make it romantic,
Long and romantic
With a happy ending?
I’ll tell it,
You be the critic.
I’ll be the critic,
Once in a wood walked a tyrant,
Known in the trade as E,
Surrounded by Ss.
What was the trade?
Any tyrant trade.
He walked there, heir of the ages,
Heir of all knowers,
Of witches and wizards—
—and warlocks?
Can the critic supply warlocks?—
—and prophets and poets and sages,
All these and a few kings—
—and queens,
Though they didn’t know much—
—and old crones—
—I’ll be the critic—
—and rainmakers—
—and medicine men—
—and philosophers—
—and alchemists—
—and astrologers—
—and gurus—
—of course gurus.
All these he was heir to.
He was soft and plump
With a round head.
He was round and plump
With a soft head.
He had short legs and short arms,
But long, strong, delicate fingers—
—like Dr. Kildare.
He was better than Dr. Kildare.
But plumper.
With his strong delicate fingers
And his strong analytical mind
And his wood-lore—
—like Dr.Dolittle—
—and his artist’s sense
Of order, pattern, control—
—call him anal—
—he came to the woods kingly.
In a flash the woods knew him.
He walked under the pines
And the pines stilled.
He held birds in his hands
And the birds did not defecate.
Chipmunks also he held—
—and they did not defecate
—and they loved him.
Dr. Dolittle.
He was fine, this E,
Marvelous with his Ss,
A proper heir
Of sages, prophets, rainmakers,
Poets, wise men, astrologers—
—and gurus.
Except he kept thinking,
If only these woods,
If only one man in these woods
Could bring order
To these woods—
—and he knew the man.
He knew the man.
Did he know the girl?
Where is the girl?
Surely this movie
Has a girl.
No girl.
None of his kind.
Less than kind.
The more he heard of their secrets—
—secrets?—
—political secrets, social secrets,
Secrets of rot, corruption,
Injustice, slavery.
The more he heard,
The more did the worm creep in him,
The worm of reform.
He would train the woods!
Hip, hip.
He would rub the lichen off boulders—
—give the pill to the birds—
—plant the trees in rows—
—sweep up the pine needles—
—bury the dead—
—bury the girl—
—there was no girl.
The king of the woods was a liberal and anal,
An all-American lab man.
So with his strong delicate fingers—
—he began to pry.
Can I tell it?
You tell it.
When the son of a bitch
Went after then: private parts,
They disowned him.
Worse. They held a meeting.
The chipmunks?
Chipmunks, ferns,
Bees, pines,
Phoebes, spiders,
Woodchucks—
—this is too long.
They met.
They stormed, they plotted.
“Get the tyrant,”
Shouted a hawk—
—and a dove sighed.
“String him up,”
Cried a small tarantula—
—and a girl clapped.
There was no girl.
I do tire
Of this story.
And they moved in.
And there was E,
Trapped, as it appeared,
By his own Ss.
He looked around him,
Looked in the eyes,
And his own drooped.
He squinted ahead of him,
Squinted at paws,
And his fingers slackened.
The strong, delicate fingers?
All the muscles slackened.
He went limp.
He could move nothing.
He lay on the pine needles.
He looked at the sky.
He tried to speak,
But his voice was silent.
The chipmunks had got him!
And the ferns, and the bees,
They had got him, he the determiner,
Except—
—with a shriek of compassion
The girl entered the woods.
Call it that.
Call it that?
He began to sing.
But his voice was silent.
Mi-mi-mi, he whispered.
Mi-mi-mi, and the voice swelled.
Mi-mi-mi—-
—and the girl helped him up,
And they made their way through the chipmunks,
Slowly, out of the woods
Into the meadow,
Where they made the scene
Until quitting time.
You’re the tyrant.
What, then, critic?
The song only,
And maybe not that.
Can we both sing the song?
Let us both sing the song.
NOTE: There is a disease, myasthenia gravis, to which E’s
trouble loosely conforms. In laboratory experiments E
stands for experimenter, S for subject.