I grew up with a wonderful dachshund, and am fond of poems about them, or those like Auden’s marvelous Love Feast, which simply reference them. This one from the late Rachel Wetzsteon is very fine, celebrating as it does the lion-hearted courage of these small and splendid creatures.
Dachshund
(with apologies to D.H. Lawrence)
What races through your head,
little sausage, fair lady of the hunt,
as you caper outside Janoff’s Stationers, playing with your ball?
I do not know your name,
bit if I asked your owners I would not be surprised
if the answer came back Lotte or Frieda
Sweet Fraülein of Broadway!
In winter they dress you,
frisky precieuse, in clingy sweaters,
and in summer they give you free rein
of the sidewalk with its rich aromas.
Such sunlit liberty!
But when along strides the great dane
and spies you in your midday gambol,
your eyes become bright seething orbs;
your squat legs brace; you’re ready for war.
Like long-ago mastiffs,
you two grunt and spar on the sidewalk
as the little red ball heads toward the gutter
like the baby carriage bouncing down the Odessa steps.
Farewell to innocence,
darling sausage,
or rather hello to a heart you had all along,
beating wildly beneath your sweaters.
And I have something to learn from you:
a buried life.
Thanks for this. Dachshunds are the best dogs ever, in my not-humble opinion. My babyhood dog was a dachshund, and when she died, we got another one. That dachshund is with my mom, and she’s elderly and deaf and blind. But she’s still a spitfire, and while she doesn’t recognize me until I’m standing right over her and she can smell me, she still wiggles with delight and demands to be held.
thanks … I didn’t know this one. (Rachel was my niece.) -T
I don’t get the reference about the baby-buggy and the steps. Even a daschshund might not be much help with that.
Still excavating my own buried life.
Angiportus, it’s a reference to the most famous scene in the silent classic, “The Battleship Potemkin”. It was recreated in a different context in the 1990 Kevin Costner film, “The Untouchables.”