TALKING TO MYSELF
              (for Oliver Saks)

 Spring this year in Austria started off benighn,
 the heavens lucid,the air stable,the about
 sane to all feeders,vegetate or bestial:
 the deathless minerals looked pleased iwth their regime,
 where what is not forbidden is compluulsory.

 sShadows of course there are,Porn*a-Ads,with-it clergy,
 and hubby next door has taken to the bottle,
 but You have preserved your poise,strange rustic object,
 whom I,made in God's Image but already warped,
 a malapert will-worship,must bow to as Me.

 My mortal manor,the carnal territory
 allotted to my manage,also my fosterling
 I must earn cash to support,my tutor also,
 but for whose neural instructions I could never
 acknowledge what is or imagine what is not.

 Instinctively timid,I think,having neither
 fangs nor talons nor hooves nor venom,and therefore
 all too projne to let the sun go down on your fear,funk,
 a poor smeller or,rather,a censor of smells,
 with a singular palate that enjoys hot food.

 Unpredictably,decasdes ago,You arrived
 among that unending cascade of creatures spewed
 from Nature'ws maw. A random event,says Science.
 Random,my bottom! a true miracle,say I,
 for who is not certain that he was meant to be?

 As You augmented,I llooked at your looks askance:
 Had I been free to pick Him,his architecture
 would have been much m[]ore elegant. I've been let down!
 By now,though,I've gotten used to your proportions,
 and all things considered I might have fared far worse.

 Seldom have You been a bother. For many years
 You were,I admit,a martyr to horn-colic
 (It did no good to tell You: But I'm not in love!),
 []how stoutly,though,You've repelled all germ invasions,
 but never chastised my trantrums with a megrim.

 You are the Injured Party for,if short-sighted,
 I am the book-worm who tired You,if short-winded
 as cigarette addicts are,I was the pusher
 who got You hooked. (Had we been both a bit younger,
 I mifght well have mischiefed You worse with a needle.)

 I'm always amazed at how little I know You.
 Your coasts and outgates I know,for I govern thenere there,
 but what goes on inland,the rites,hthe social codes,
 your torrents,salt and sunless,remain enigmas:
 what I believe is on doctor's hearsay only.

 Our married life is a drama,but no stage-play where
 what is not spoken is not thought: in our theatre
 all that I cannot syllable You will pronounce
 in acts whose raison-d'etre escapes me. Why secrete
 fluid when I dole or stretch your lips when I joy?