Reflections on Smokes

and not hysterical; gray but not dull; often brilliant;

crossed of eye; stoical, not vain, and I think, unafraid.

And Sammie, you have looked into Smokes' spring-green

eyes enough to see that there was not the implacable fury

of the tiger in them but there was a roar in his lonesome

whimper. For Sammie, you knew Smokes best of all

And you knew Smokes' eyes expressed love and Smokes

was love and Smokes is love.

And because he was kindly kissed by Nature,

Smokes held to all that was good,

and discarded the bad, and glorified his God

with Affection, for God is the God of cats even

as He is the God over us all.

And though Smokes was hidden for years

from malefactors and cat-despisers,

he took this all as a matter of course

and all in the challenge of a day's meanderings.

For Smokes hailed from Ashland and Whipple

in the fiery vigor of his years, amorous of Clark,

roaming broad Devon long before the harrowing

of the narrow house, evading petty captors,

clasped to the heart of Juliet Holy Cross,

Bringing light dappling gray to the House of Moy.

Is there any need to proclaim his worth more?

All greatness and goodness reverts to heaven finally.

Yet let his leave taking from the great city be told:

without cries of dissent Smokes went to the House

of Newburg and was there never disorderly

or exaggerated, neither grandiloquent nor imposing,

but always deeply gray and pronouncing in a single sound.

And there a heaviness came over me, Sammie, for Smokes

was not loved by the keeper of the keys of Newburg,

and these were not the keys to the Temple of Wisdom,

but its contrary. And though Smokes committed no

wrongdoing there and no evil lives after him there,

a great weariness descended on us.

And I kept Smokes unseen like Keats' daylight star,

but men are prone to unbelief and malice,

and many days of entanglements and deceptions

and rehearsals of more deceptions and misdirections

forced Smokes into the country where I harbored

him with lawyerly dictions. And Smokes brought luck

and charm with him and was well-received

in the country and this was the finest part

of Smokes' life for it was here that he lost

his loneliness, and Smokes still had some good time

before the dreamless sleep, while I was already

an old man making my bed. And Sammie, Smokes was spoiled

in the country and lavished with cat praises and was

of capital spirit, soft in the embraces of youth, before

the profaning of his Eden, for payments came only

in explanations and defenses. The human haters were back.

And in this forfeiture of his happy valley came a fall

for Smokes, for he was consigned to the confinements

of the House of Melrose and was once again habited

to hiding-places. It is written that there is no greater sorrow

than to recall the occasions when we were almost happy,

and I am not trite to remind myself that even later

in palsied age Smokes was great of memory and not remiss

of mind for he had many solitary hours to ponder

all that required pondering. And Smokes was strategically moved

again and again and I was a Schindler to this cat and Advocate

pleading his causes to boarders and those who would not scorn him.

For many were the times that I pretended to have brought him

to the street encircling the House of Melrose, and was often accused

of bringing the Gray Cat into the house, but I forever denied it

and secreted Smokes away again under some stairwell

or behind a side-door. And each new winter broke one of Smokes' charms

and he was slower of step and weighed down it seemed,

and getting a little more vocal and I was in distress of watching Smokes

with a high degree of care and the great weariness … the weariness,

and still Smokes was very much unbowed by it all

and took everything as well as one of his kind would.

And Sammie, allow me to say that time and temptation

cannot conspire to loosen the graces that I hold upon this cat

nor the Fondness that nature's maladies interrupted,

nor can I forget to remember his splendor and his appreciation.

And Sammie, let me also say that if ever I was cross with Smokes,

I was sharing a great Weariness with him,

but truly in the most part, in his

Standing, sitting, walking,

Lying, drinking, sleeping,

Leaping, playing, crouching,

Coughing, crying, sneezing,

I left Smokes largely to his own good fortunes,

arts, and sobrieties, and mainly as always,

in the trust of our God.