My Apish Cousins
winked too much and were afraid of snakes. The zebras, supreme in
their abnormality; the elephants with their fog-colored skin
and strictly practical appendages
were there, the small cats and the parrakeet—
trivial and humdrum on examination, destroying
bark and portions of the food it could not eat.
I recall their magnificence, now not more magnificent
than it is dim. It is difficult to recall the ornament,
speech, and precise manner of what one might
call the minor acquaintances twenty
years back; but I shall never forget—that Gilgamesh among
the hairy carnivora—that cat with the
wedge-shaped, slate-gray marks on its forelegs and the resolute tail,
astringently remarking: “They have imposed on us with their pale,
half fledged protestations, trembling about
in inarticulate frenzy, saying
it is not for all of us to understand art, finding it
all so difficult, examining the thing
as if it were something inconceivably arcanic, as
symmetrically frigid as something carved out of chrysopras
or marble—strict with tension, malignant
in its power over us and deeper
than the sea when it proffers flattery in exchange for hemp,
rye, flax, horses, platinum, timber and fur.”