“Who can be happy, when he looks at the great contenders?”
--Robert Lowell to the editors of Partisan Review, Fall 1966
Muggs licks her butterscotch paw
(the left one) to wash her face, then
pauses, lost, it seems, in thought.
A cat may look at a king unmoved
by what’s reflected. Gaze though
is a glass that looks for aught
worth its salt on Capitol Hill,
let alone the Dog Tower in Moscow,
from which Tsar Ivan Groznyi*
(it's said) hurled puppies for kicks,
or the Forbidden City. The
great contenders may contend,
but a lot of them, alas, are dicks!
Cat pictures and videos, what's more,
are pics, not cats.
And as for happiness . . .
well, you might ask, what’s that?
*Ivan the Terrible (1530-84)
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