Gifted Tongues

I know Katha Pollitt slightly by email.  And while she's a formidable political columnist (if not one I always agree with), the thing that impresses me most about her is not her commentary, but the fact that she does commentary in addition to being an excellent poet.  Go read her entire poem about cats here, but I particularly love these lines:

Observing two cats on a sunporch,

you might think of them as a pair of Florentine bravoes

awaiting through slitted eyes the least lapse of attention—

then slash! the stiletto

or alternately as a long-married couple, who hardly

notice each other but find it somehow a comfort

sharing the couch, the evening news, the cocoa.

Both these ideas

are wrong. Two cats together are like two strangers

cast up by different storms on the same desert island

who manage to guard, despite the utter absence

of privacy, chocolate,

useful domestic articles, reading material,

their separate solitudes. 

First, the use of the word "bravoes" should be used more often in our discourse, along with terms like "desperado" and "rogue."  (I suppose that would depend on the ability of anyone to be a true desperado or rogue these days, but that's a discussion for another time.)  But it's remarkable to me when people can set their brains to two tasks that require very different but related skills, and do well at both of them.