Major Bear

Although I'm cracking wise and quoting Yeats,

explaining all the voices Kant can't do,
the damn bear won't look back. He has a den
accessible to meat- and berry-men,
but not to those whose popcorn-covered cates
feed just themselves. He may live in a zoo,

which is his loss to bear: but one must buy
goodwill from prisoners. He can smell my heart,
so fat, so crowded, from this far away.
When I go home to betty, he will stay,
a bear among men, a bear who will not try
to rise above his nature. Take your art

to some museum, where a red Matisse,
resigned to gilt, rectangularly framed,
hangs. Never shuffles. Never craps or roars.
Blinks not. As squares dance in the in-of-doors,
my bear is moated by such white police.
Die, will you? Do. The bear will not be blamed.