Shane McCrae
The King of the Sadnesses of Dogs
1.
I brought my gift to the king of the sadnesses of dogs
He sighed the sigh he sighs in the stories children read
The sigh that makes the dogs of the kingdom howl no matter
How far from the king the dogs might rest their noisy heads
I set my gift on one of the stacks at the foot of the steps
By which one mounts from the long blue gold-fringed rug to the foot
Of the throne of the king I walked the length of the hall beside
The rug upon which none but the king walks and set
My gift on top of the stack then bowed and backed away
The throne looked chiseled from a single stone the color
Of yellowed bone and flecked with brown like meat and blood
Clinging to bone the stain and spread of them being yellow
He sighed the sigh he sighs and close disharmonies
Filled the grand hall as if an organist had pressed
Down all the keys of a pipe organ bigger than
The hall itself the stampede of dogs’ sadnesses
Rattled the men in the stained glass in the high windows
At which the sunlight stopped through which it could not pass
Sadnesses crowded so against the glass I tripped and
Fell and was pinned by the howls flat on my back on the glass-
y stones beside the rug
2.
I saw myself a man-
Sized beetle writhing on the glassy green and white
Stones my arms flapping my green body twisting bucking
To free itself of the vision by enacting it
Trapped by its struggle to get free I saw myself
And saw the gold I weeks before had scooped from the stream
Beside my shanty in my hand in the small water
Cupped in my hand and saw the thin ring I had ham-
mered from the gold sunken in the glass box I had bor-
rowed from my neighbor knowing I never would return it
I saw myself writhing on the stones wearing the finest suit my
Neighbor would lend me and I saw myself still sending
It back by courier from the palace in a burlap
Sack stamped with the king’s seal while the howls shook the stones
As if they were an army stamping on the stones
I writhed and trembled hoping still on the trembling stones
Shane McCrae reads “The King of the Sadnesses of Dogs”
Shane McCrae’s most recent books are Sometimes I Never Suffered, shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize, and The Gilded Auction Block, both published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Later this year, the Cleveland State University Poetry Center will release an expanded edition of his first book, Mule, with an introduction by Victoria Chang. McCrae has received a Lannan Literary Award, a Whiting Writer’s Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He lives in New York City and teaches at Columbia University.