Paws for Poetry: Reflecting on A Little Language by Robert Duncan

I know a little language of my cat, though Dante says   
that animals have no need of speech and Nature   
abhors the superfluous.   My cat is fluent.   He   
converses when he wants with me.   To speak

is natural.   And whales and wolves I’ve heard   
in choral soundings of the sea and air
know harmony and have an eloquence that stirs   
my mind and heart—they touch the soul.   Here

Dante’s religion that would set Man apart   
damns the effluence of our life from us   
to build therein its powerhouse.

It’s in his animal communication Man is   
      true, immediate, and   
in immediacy, Man is all animal.

His senses quicken in the thick of the symphony,
      old circuits of animal rapture and alarm,
attentions and arousals in which an identity rearrives.
      He hears
particular voices among
      the concert, the slightest   
rustle in the undertones,
      rehearsing a nervous aptitude   
yet to prove his. He sees the flick
      of significant red within the rushing mass
of ruddy wilderness and catches the glow
      of a green shirt
to delite him in a glowing field of green
      —it speaks to him—
and in the arc of the spectrum color   
      speaks to color.
The rainbow articulates
      a promise he remembers   
he but imitates
      in noises that he makes,

this speech in every sense   
the world surrounding him.
He picks up on the fugitive tang of mace
      amidst the savory mass,
and taste in evolution is an everlasting key.
      There is a pun of scents in what makes sense.

      Myrrh it may have been,
the odor of the announcement that filld the house.

      He wakes from deepest sleep   

upon a distant signal and waits   

      as if crouching, springs

      to life.

My Thoughts

Let me begin by saying: this poem feels like something I once dreamed while half-asleep in a sunbeam, tail twitching to a rhythm only I could hear.

Duncan calls it “a little language,” but I find that misleading. It’s not small. It’s vast. It slips under the door, behind your ears, into the dark corners of your thoughts—the places you only go when you’re alone (or a cat).

The poem begins with a peacock—tail like a fan of eyes.

     I do not know more than the peacock / what it is / that the whole display is about;

Exactly. We cats understand this. Sometimes we strut without knowing why. We present ourselves, tails high, paws light, gaze deliberate. Is it for attention? For meaning? For mystery?

We don’t always know. But we do it. That’s the thing. The language is in the gesture.

     Lovers know what they want / but not what they are.

Now that made my whiskers twitch. So many humans—searching, longing, mewling their hearts out. Wanting warmth, or company, or that particular sun-warmed patch of meaning. But not understanding their own shape. Their own scent. Their own stillness.

Cats don’t suffer from this. We know exactly what we are, even when we pretend not to.

     The tune is articulate / but the words are unknown.

Yes. That’s the language I speak when I chirrup at the window or yowl at 3 a.m. It means something. I know what it means. My Purrson does not. But she feels it, doesn’t she? She hears the tune, even if the words are lost in the curl of my tongue.

And then—

     I cannot translate. / I cannot speak for speech.

This is my favorite part. Duncan isn’t just writing about language. He’s writing about what hides beneath it. The feeling behind the meow. The gaze that says more than a paragraph. The tail flick that ends an entire conversation.

Humans chase meaning. Cats become it.

By the end, Duncan says:

     I am not alone / in my own language.

And that, I think, is the truth of it. No matter how quiet or strange or small your language is—there is someone who understands. Who hears. Even if they cannot speak it back.

Sometimes, that someone is a cat curled at your feet, blinking slowly. Sometimes, it is your own shadow in the morning.

Robert Duncan, you did not write a little language. You wrote a language that paws at the soul.

A Tribute: “I Spoke in Tail Flicks”

A poem by Tyson the Cat

I spoke in tail flicks—
not for you,
but for the air
that brushes my whiskers
like a secret.

I walked the edge
of the windowsill
where language ends
and watching begins.

My ears turned
toward things you could not hear.
Your voice,
all vowels and urgency,
meant nothing
to the quiet in my paws.

I offered you a glance—
half-lidded, slow—
the sort of glance
that opens doors in dreams.

You asked what I wanted.
I replied
with a blink,
a stretch,
a paw resting just so
on the edge of the impossible.

I do not meow for meaning.
I do not need the word
when I am the mood.

You say I am silent.
But the room changes
when I enter it.
That, too,
is a kind of poem.

The Poem Beneath the Purr

Some poems meow. Some roar. This one… it watches. It flicks its tail. It listens to the parts of you even you haven’t noticed yet. Duncan’s language isn’t little—it’s liminal. It lives in the hush before a pounce, the echo behind a thought, the pause between blinks. It speaks for those who cannot explain themselves but still feel. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what poetry was always meant to be.

Your Turn, Furriends!

What do you think? Have you ever spoken in a language only your cat seemed to understand? Or felt something stir in a poem that never quite said what it meant? Tell me in the comments—no translation necessary.

Purrs and unspoken poems,
Tyson 🐾