Why is the world so focused on the barking of the dog
when the cosmos quakes with rattling station wagons,
huge mowers moaning, blowers droning, tools that cruelly dig,
motorbikes that scream like raving dragons,
rigs rumbling over potholes, doors maniacally banging,
jackhammers gouging roads that throb and rock,
jet aircraft booming, sirens yowling, railroad crossings clanging,
the ice-cream trucks that drift down every block
repeating “Turkey in the Straw” or “Do Your Ears Hang Low”?
While mobs engage in age-old sports like shouting,
while firecrackers burst and chainsaws roar and roosters crow,
while gangs wage war upon the ghetto, shooting,
there comes a more abhorrent noise, a din without cessation,
begun at dawn and going even now,
a strange and strident racket causing serious vexation—
the voice of misery, going “bow-wow-wow.”
__________
(Appeared in Autumn Sky Poetry Daily.)