The Naming of Cats is a difficult matter,

     It isn’t just one of your holiday games;

You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter

When I tell you, a cat must have THREE DIFFERENT NAMES.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use daily,

     Such as Peter, Augustus, Alonzo, or James,

Such as Victor or Jonathan, George or Bill Bailey—

     All of them sensible everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,

     Some for the gentlemen, some for the dames:

Such as Plato, Admetus, Electra, Demeter—

     But all of them sensible everyday names,

But I tell you, a cat needs a name that’s particular,

     A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,

Else how can he keep up his tail perpendicular,

     Or spread out his whiskers, or cherish his pride?

Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,

     Such as Munkustrap, Quaxo, or Coricopat,

Such as Bombalurina, or else Jellylorum—

     Names that never belong to more than one cat.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,

     And that is the name that you never will guess;

The name that no human research can discover—

     But THE CAT HIMSELF KNOWS, and will never confess.

When you notice a cat in profound meditation,

     The reason, I tell you, is always the same:

His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation

     Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:

          His ineffable effable

          Effanineffable

Deep and inscrutable singular name.

I found the lion in my living room
curled on the carpet, licking his red claws,
and he looked up, haloed with fur,
a bloom of blood around his smile,
and yawned his jaws so wide
I saw between his great black lips
my world in all its flaming symmetry,
the corona of cities, people tithing to war ships
that rip the blue sky-fabric of the sea,
falling towers and those trapped underneath,
the trillion suns like sparkles
on his tongue, each planet crushed
like a mint between his teeth.

I won’t say this was a dream.
How could it be? I felt the hot rubber
of his lips, the tongue’s wet slubber,
the sirocco of his breath steaming my face
as I gripped those jaws and wrestled
in a whirl with the dumb beast.

I won’t claim this was a vision.
It was the lion for real this time,
the beast whose hunched muscle
I’d always sensed in the dark apartment,
whom I’d known only by long scribbles
of yellow hair left on the couch,
and the shadow paws that push me
down into the bed at night.
Now here he was, upright beast
playing claw-piano on my back
and letting out a bomb blast roar
as we knocked lamps to the floor and danced.

At last, he rolled on his side and gazed
from carnivorous amber eyes
as if to say, “Stroke me, I won’t attack.”
“Simba,” I said, and lost my hands
inside the nimbus of his mane,
and then I felt my way down
to his haunches, combed his hide,
the reddened prairie of his wheatgrass pelt
until it seemed it was my own body streaking
like yellow lightning across the veldt,
and I felt the slender springbok neck
between my teeth, pulsing, and bellowed
with all the joyous pain of being
soiled with lion funk, rank and dancing,
a fifty year old man in a lion suit.

I won’t say this is true, but it’s true 
when I come home the frizzy neighborly 
lap cats leave off from chasing squirrels, 
snuffle up to me like kittens,
and though this lion with sinews that stretch 
like symbols into the infinite and the carnal
will curl up and go to sleep again
will go back to being a paper lion, 
unreal but leaving remembrances 
coiled yellow on my carpets, 
I still feel his oven breath, the arc lamps 
of his eyes, and feel the great paw at night
pushing me down into the shadow cave 
where the rest of my self 
breathes asleep, never to be known, 
never to be born for real.

A ghost, though invisible, still is like a place
your sight can knock on, echoing; but here
within this thick black pelt, your strongest gaze
will be absorbed and utterly disappear:

just as a raving madman, when nothing else
can ease him, charges into his dark night
howling, pounds on the padded wall, and feels
the rage being taken in and pacified.

She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen
into her, so that, like an audience,
she can look them over, menacing and sullen,
and curl to sleep with them. But all at once

as if awakened, she turns her face to yours;
and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny,
inside the golden amber of her eyeballs
suspended, like a prehistoric fly.

Mysterious shapes, with wands of joy and pain,
Which seize us unaware in helpless sleep,
And lead us to the houses where we keep
Our secrets hid, well barred by every chain
That we can forge and bind: the crime whose stain
Is slowly fading ’neath the tears we weep;
Dead bliss which, dead, can make our pulses leap—
Oh, cruelty! To make these live again!
They say that death is sleep, and heaven’s rest
Ends earth’s short day, as, on the last faint gleam
Of sun, our nights shut down, and we are blest.
Let this, then, be of heaven’s joy the test,
The proof if heaven be, or only seem,
That we forever choose what we will dream!

Such glorious faith as fills your limpid eyes,
       Dear little friend of mine, I never knew.
All-innocent are you, and yet all-wise.
       (For heaven’s sake, stop worrying that shoe!)
You look about, and all you see is fair;
       This mighty globe was made for you alone.
Of all the thunderous ages, you’re the heir.
       (Get off the pillow with that dirty bone!)

A skeptic world you face with steady gaze;
       High in young pride you hold your noble head;
Gayly you meet the rush of roaring days.
       (Must you eat puppy biscuit on the bed?)
Lancelike your courage, gleaming swift and strong,
       Yours the white rapture of a wingèd soul,
Yours is a spirit like a May-day song.
       (God help you, if you break the goldfish bowl!)

“Whatever is, is good,” your gracious creed.
       You wear your joy of living like a crown.
Love lights your simplest act, your every deed.
       (Drop it, I tell you—put that kitten down!)
You are God’s kindliest gift of all,—a friend.
       Your shining loyalty unflecked by doubt,
You ask but leave to follow to the end.
       (Couldn’t you wait until I took you out?)