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I OPENED the door so my last look
Should be taken outside a house and book.
Before I gave up seeing and slept
I said I would see how Sirius kept
His watch dog eye on what remained
To be gone into if not explained.
But scarcely was my door ajar
When past the leg I thrust for bar
Slipped in to be my problem guest
Not a heavenly dog made manifest,
But an earthly dog of the carriage breed,
Who having failed of the modern speed,
Now asked asylum — and I was stirred
To be the one so dog-preferred.
He dumped himself like a bag of bones,
He sighed himself a couple of groans,
And head to tail then firmly curled
Like swearing off on the traffic world.
I set him water, I set him food.
He rolled an eye with gratitude
(Or merely manners it may have been),
But never so much as lifted chin.
His hard tail loudly smacked the floor
As if beseeching me, “Please, no more
I can’t explain — tonight at least.”
His brow was perceptibly trouble-creased.
So I spoke in tones of adoption thus:
“Gustie, old boy, Dalmatian Gus
You’re right, there’s nothing to discuss.
Don’t try to tell me what’s on your mind,
The sorrow of having been left behind,
Or the sorrow of having run away.
All that can wait for the light of day.
Meanwhile feel obligation-free.
Nobody has to confide in me.”
’Twas too one sided a dialogue,
And I wasn’t sure I was talking dog. I broke off puzzled. But all the same
In fancy I ratified his name,
Gustie, Dalmatian Gus, that is,
And started shaping my life to his,
Finding him his right supplies
And sharing his miles of exercise.

Next morning the minute I was about
He went to the door to be let out
As much as to say, “I have paid my call.
You mustn’t be hurt if now I’m all
For getting back somewhere or further on.”
I opened the door and he was gone.
I was to taste in little the grief
That comes of dogs’ lives being so brief,
Only a fraction of ours at most.
He might have been the dream of a ghost
In spite of the way his tail had smacked
My floor so hard and matter-of-fact.
And things have been going so strangely since
I wouldn’t be too hard to convince,
I might even claim, he was Sirius
(Think of presuming to call him Gus),
The star itself, Heaven’s greatest star,
Not a meteorite, but an avatar,
Who had made an overnight descent
To show by deeds he didn’t resent
My having depended on him so long
Yet done so little about it in song.1
A symbol was all he could hope to convey,
An intimation, a shot of ray,
A meaning I was supposed to seek,
And finding, was indisposed to speak.

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One More Brevity by Robert Frost