One day in a museum a companion described for me the exquisite, soulful, miniature drawings by Daumier. She told me of a little dog, a dog made of curlicues. He was jumping in the wholly invisible wind. And I loved him, though I’d never see him at all. This is what Rainer Rilke understood as creaturely love, a tenderness. And its the understanding that while human beings are burdened by consciousness there is “the animal” underneath us who lives in the present. Of course this is imagination and sentimentality in equal measure. If we could interview a fox she’d tell us that the present is often filled with terror. But let’s have some Romantic animal consciousness mixed up with joy. Not potential joy. The hear and now kind. And lets not forget that someone described Daumier to me. That was the present also. Can we turn our language toward the present? The best in poetry does so. We must change our lives. Say what you like, the best poets are open to tenderness and being alive right here and now. If you don’t think so you have plenty of other choices. Pharmaceutical factories abound.
Planet of the Blind 