Bidart strategically withholds Belafont’s identity until the fourth line, where he reveals him to be a dog, one with his
“butt on couch and front legs straddling
space to rest on an ottoman, barking till
his masters clean his teeth with dental floss.”
The poem concludes,
“How dare being
give him this body.

Held up to a mirror, he writhed.”
Belafont, like the humans he imitates, repudiates his image as unrepresentative of the self within.

One problem remains. The dog is not, as Heidegger would say, capable of Dasein: he is presumably unaware of his own being, and thus incapable of questioning his essence or that of others.

¶ 6:01 PM