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Bear in English The animal is the act, the keeper says. He's read his Yeats. He has a PhD in Zen, and he has fixed the communist flamingos with his pinking shears. He's given all the monkeys mirrors and allowances. I'm told to play the sax like mad—a crowd adores the blues. But where are others like myself, who feel the heaviness of human names—the weight of withers, muzzle, rib cage, balls? Are bodies only what the keeper says—a little occupation for the mind? At night a hundred brilliant parallelograms slide through my sleeping-room, unhampered by the humped domestications I was once so taken with. On Sundays, consolation gets dished out (like, "Nothing actually exists"). A slave is given everything a slave could need—his gravy and his glasses, lumps to love and roofs to look up to. The keeper says this is the life! It never snows, it never rains! But Christ, without a sky, I can't have faith. I studied every day for years (between the acts) to learn his words for free, for once, for all. But in his sentences were only two varieties of voice, their premises the same. They need each other, overlord and underdog, and I became him, as the mink became his wife. I mean eventually language turned into my only 166 way to know. I found the words and what they said was "Do not let me go." 167 ...

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