0204 Every Dog Will Have His Night

The prick of tears around the eye when reading poetry is reassuring - that despite what happened this morning, yesterday, in childhood, in your last life, whatever - you're still human. Philip Levine - whose poems prick my eyes so often that I'd like to think him to be the heart of America or ought to be, reckons that man is the only animal that has visionary power. But I wonder. Can't do more than that; but wonder nevertheless: my dog, who lays him down on the hearth at night with a sigh that shakes his whole body, as if he's not planning to do anything between sleep and wake, twitches his hind legs in dream; and I, unimaginatively, assume he's chasing rabbits - too intense a twitching for just some playful thrown ball: does he catch them, or like in my dreams, get further and further away, the harder he tries? But psychologists of the human mind reckon that dreams are the sewage farms of emotion: cleansing the mind of fears (and, it seems, for an astonishingly high percentage of Britons, having a very friendly afternoon tea with the Queen...) . Which suggests that those chases of failure or perhaps ideal success that my dog dreams, cleanse emotions too - and who can doubt, seeing his dog hang his head in shame, with that strange straightness of the neck like human spine which can touch his master's heart like nothing else, who can doubt that dogs have emotions? - imply that dogs could have ideals (and am I God, or just the leader of his pack - how do I, then, measure up?) . And if they have emotions, and ideals, then should we not enquire of them more closely what is dreamt of in their philosophy? My dog, haunched here beside me, looks up at me with liquid brown eyes brimming with faith, hope, and love; trusting that I'll make the right decision about all this.