Pore

.

Dog, Dimitrova Street, left bank district, Voronezh: photo by Raise-the-Sail, 19 April 2009

Oh, old one
old Pore,
forgotten dog, small
animal that once existed
these sixty odd
years ago or more.
There was once a photo of you,
I remember it only dimly,
you had a name,
your name was not Pore,
I cannot recall
what your veritable name was
any more, it was so
long ago. Tugs
at my heart now I did not
care for you more,
little Pore, small
petshop mongrel
merely existing
so obscurely
and briefly, harming
none, ignored by all
and got rid of so soon
after you came, relegated
to what sad end
I cannot think of now
if I ever did know.
All I know is that you are gone.
Your photo is gone.
The vague memory I have of you
will soon be gone also,
those will have been the last traces
of you left
in the world, Pore.
I wish I had paid more attention
to you when the chance was there.
For you, if by some
weird chance
you are aware of them,
wherever you are,
these memories
I am seeking
must represent a sadness.
Or then again
maybe not,
for you were so undemanding always
in your brief time
under the weak occluded
1940s
sun. You asked so little
and received perhaps even less than that.
It will seem just as well to you,
it may be, to be forgotten,
even, perhaps,
a relief. Your image
dwindling now
even as I write,
so dimly limned,
so small,
so unremarkable,
so beset
if not by abuse
then by neglect,
that surely,
yes,
that's the part I do not forget,
the neglect, the remorse,
the thought.
I think
but am not sure
that in the lost photograph
you were looking up anxiously
at the camera
cradled in a dirty blanket
inside
a cardboard box.

Man playing with dog: photo by Roger Rössing, between 29 August 1948 and 15 September 1948 (Deutsche Fotothek)