"What's a NANSEN?": the Biggest FAQ

Nansen was a cat, real or imagined, I can't say for certain; and I don't think it's any of our business to ask Gary Snyder, the renowned poet, essayist, Professor Emeritus at UCDavis, as well as the model for Jack Kerouac's much-revered "Japhy" in his sort of-novel The Dharma Bums. To me, Nansen has been many things: a reminder that Nature is sometimes best left to her own devices without the meddling of well-meaning humans, a kindred spirit in the worst moments of my life, an internet nickname that stuck, and now, as my determination to LIVE, really live, grows stronger despite my struggle with chronic pain, an aspect of myself that is tucked inside the pages of a favorite book, to be lovingly protected. "A little souvenir of that terrible year," as the Sundays' song put it so very well. Gary Snyder has graciously given me permission to post "Nansen", originally published by New Directions in his book of poems The Back Country. "Nansen," among many other masterpieces, is now available in Snyder's No Nature: New and Selected Poems, a Pantheon Books/Random House publication. Thank you, Gary. I hope this poem touches more new places in many young souls for generations to come.

NANSEN

I found you on a rainy morning
After a typhoon
In a bamboo grove at Daitoku-ji.
Tiny wet rag with a
Huge voice, you crawled under the fence
To my hand. Left to die.
I carried you home in my raincoat.
“Nansen, cheese!” you’d shout an answer
And come running.
But you never got big,
Bandy-legged bright little dwarf—
Sometimes not eating, often coughing
Mewing bitterly at inner twinge.

Now, thin and older, you won’t eat
But milk and cheese. Sitting on a pole
In the sun. Hardy with resigned
Discontent.
You just weren’t made right. I saved you,
And you three-year life has been full
Of mild, steady pain.