“But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes.”

[larryhammer]

For Poetry Monday, another cat poem from Le Guin:

Black Leonard in Negative Space, Ursula K. Le Guin

All that surrounds the cat
is not the cat, is all
that is not the cat, is all,
is everything, except the animal.
It will rejoin without a seam
when he is dead. To know
that no-space is to know
what he does not, that time
is space for love and pain.
He does not need to know it.


--L.

Subject quote from The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

Comments

[sovay]

Black Leonard in Negative Space

I learned this one from Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences which I read for the first time the year I turned nine.

[gwynnega]

That is such a good poem.

[larryhammer]

I’d forgotten this was in that collection — it’s been nearly that long since I read it.

[larryhammer]

Many layers, supported by wordplay.

[sovay]

I’d forgotten this was in that collection — it’s been nearly that long since I read it.

I took the title literally and imagined a cat as a pure black silhouette against a black space of stars.