<wright's "the only animal"> 2003-04-30.10:40 p.m. The Only Animal Franz Wright The only animal that commits suicide went for a walk in the park, basked on a hard bench in the first star, travelled to the edge of space in an armchair while company quietly talked, and abruptly returned, the room empty. The only animal that cries, that takes off its clothes and reports to the mirror, the one and only animal that brushes its own teeth-- somewhere the only animal that smokes a cigarette, that lies down and flies backward in time, that rises and walks to a book and looks up a word heard the telephone ringing in the darkness downstairs and decided to answer no more. And I understand, too well: how many times have I made the decision to dwell from now on in the hour of my death (the space I took up here scarlessly closing like water) and said I'm never coming back, and yet this morning I stood once again in this world, the garden ark and vacant tomb of what I can't imagine, between twin eternities, some sort of wings, more or less equidistantly exiled from both, hovering in the dreaming called being awake, where You gave me in secret one thing to perceive, the tall blue starry strangeness of being here at all. You gave us each in secret one thing to perceive. Furless now, upright, My banished and experimental child You said, though your own heart condemn you I do not condemn you. back /& forth /& frosting names are often sad