Where is my dear sixteen-year-old cat
I wish to carry upstairs in my arms
looking up at me and thinking
be careful, dear human
Sixteen years. How many days since
I found you as if an urchin in a snowstorm
and you moved in assured
learned the territories of the house
and what became your garden
Only now do we see the horizon
where you paused two or three times
then slipped into
Was is too soon or too late
that last summer of your life
when we watched your walk
down to a river to take a sip
from its ongoing flow
Oh Jack I miss your presence everywhere
in the corners of rooms, in every chair,
or nesting in a cardboard box
Take me back where the past can again enter
those early remembered rooms, our snowbound street,
lift me upside down in your arms, I cannot stand it
I need a journey too. Have I slept my life away,
do I understand anything? Will I wear a bell
like yours into the afterlife where language
no longer exists and we gather only linked sounds
like oars from a passing boat,
those few syllables
to recall tenderness
You no longer wait for us
All day long, Basho wrote,
A lark sings in the air
Yet he seems to have had
Not quite his fill
—Michael Ondaatje
Michael Ondaatje’s new book, which includes this poem, is called A Year of Last Things; the book comes out in March 2024.
