Giacometti's Dog Poem by Robert Wallace

Lopes in bronze:
scruffy,
thin. In
the Museum of Modern Art
head
down, neck long as sadness
lowering to hanging ears
- he's eyeless-
that hear
nothing, and the sausage
muzzle
that leads him as
surely as eyes:
he might
be
dead, dried webs or clots of flesh
and fur
on the thin, long bones- but
isn't, obviously
is obviously
traveling intent on his
own aims: legs
lofting
with a gayety the dead aren't known
for, Going
onward in one place,
he doesn't so much ignore
as not recognize
the well-
dressed Sunday hun-
dreds who passing, pausing make
his bronze
road
move. Why
do they come to admire
him?
They wouldn't care for real dogs
less raggy
than he
is? It's his tragic
insouciance
bugs them? or is
it that art can make us
cherish
anything- this command
of shaping and abutting space-
that makes us love
even mutts,
even the world, accep
even
the starry wheels by which we're hurled
toward death, having
the rocks and
wind for comrades?
It's not this starved hound,
but Giacometti seeing
him we see.
We'll stand in line all day
to see one man
love anything enough.