Kakvas
We gathered at the cave’s mouth where he had
made his descent into the underworld,
the cave from which come terrifying sounds,
and noxious odors, yellow mists arose.
Up from the vapors that were sulfurous,
emerging from them was Pythagoras.
Before another person said a word,
a dog came running up. The following
was what he said, but everyone else there
(except Pythagoras) just heard these words
as a dog’s barking that was meaningless:
“Hear my complaint, oh please Pythagoras,
against my master. Every day he beats
me without mercy for the things I do
consistent with my nature, animal,
behaviors of a dog as typical.
“Compulsively, because I smelled his feet,
the scent on leather straps left by the door,
they tasted salty so I started to
chew on them ‘till they were a meaty mass.
I urinated on the kitchen floor
because I was excited at the smell
of roasting meat the servants had prepared.
He beats me in his anger just because
I bark incessantly at passersby.
I only bark because I am a dog.
It is my nature when a threat’s perceived
to make sure that the pack is made aware.
“I know that you don’t recognize me now.
I am reincarnated as this dog
that everyone refers to as ‘Kakvas’.
In fact, I am your friend Theagenes
who died some years ago, and now since your
return, can you hear me because of how
you have in Hades spoken with the dead?
“Now that my soul has been deposited
into this lower form of life so that
another lifetime I’d experience,
but as a dog and not again a man,
I would see how our species are alike,
both dog and man, our natures, similar.
Because I am a dog, I cannot speak,
and neither can I author poetry,
but somehow it’s within my consciousness
to have these thoughts, and please Pythagoras,
the central message, what I say to you:
all humans should be vegetarians.
“Because of how long I’ve lived as a dog,
now all the other species I perceive
have rich emotions. Every living being
upon the earth possesses consciousness
that can access the universal field
surrounding us in nonlocality
through quantum microtubules in their cells.
So tell my master to stop beating me,
and that all humans should stop eating meat.”
Pythagoras said these words in reply:
“Theagenes or Kakvas, how is it
I should address you? I cannot believe
that who is speaking either represents
my friend who is deceased, or else this dog.
“It’s Hermes come to have a game with us,
but as you say the special knowledge that
I gained from going to the underworld
allows me to see through your trickster ways.
“You see Theagenes was a philosopher
and even with this camaraderie
he claims to have now with the animals,
he would not advocate that we should eat
just plants. If we gave up on eating meat,
we would deprive those molecules the chance
to be consumed as higher being food,
by the archangels in the starry realms.
“I also know you don’t speak for this dog.
A carnivore would never recommend
a diet, to his nature, opposite.
The nature of a dog is such that he
cannot imagine anything that is
contrary to his nature as a dog.
“Keep silent, spirit, while I tell to all
what I have learned from three days underground.
No longer time could I have stayed down there.
That is the longest time that I can fast,
and also go without falling asleep.
If I had eaten any ghostly food,
or slept at any time while underground,
I would be trapped there for eternity.
I only drank the waters of the Styx,
one of whose banks touches the living’s world.
“I must report all things that I learned there
so that I tell all things material
and not fail to report on anything
where such omission in and of itself,
such failure is a fact, material.
This standard of disclosure I must bear
to honor all its terms, the covenant
I made between the living and the dead.
“They told me that the dead have died two times.
The first death went unnoticed on this side.
In fact, around them, everybody else
was also dead but no one even cared.
The first death of which they were unaware:
the sleep that they each day experienced
imagining that it’s their waking state
can’t be said to be any different than
a death, cessation of humanity.
They functioned purely as mechanical
devices with responses, chemical,
and automatic reactivity.
They operated just like a machine,
so how could they be said to have real life?
By ingrained habits, they were driven by
responses to external stimuli.
“Yet if someone can stop and recognize
that he is nothing, his identity
cannot be found someplace inside his thoughts,
that cast of characters he calls a self.
Nor can it be found in the things he feels,
that often change and frequently do not
reflect conditions of reality.
Too, one’s identity cannot be found
inside the body, which will soon decay.
“If this truth you can recognize, then you
can die before you die, be unified
with what’s inside you, with what is divine.
Dead to your self; alive with God inside.
Then when it comes time for that second death,
that voluntary death you undertook
will be the only one that you will feel.
The second death is turned into a gate
that opens to paths of eternity.”
Kakvas was silent. To himself he said,
“I know Pythagoras does not believe
I am Theagenes, nor does he think
I am this dog, but I can understand.
In that, I cannot disagree with him.
“My master should regret he wasn’t here
to hear Pythagoras’s oracles
of what he heard in Hades. He returned
a hopeful message but I have my doubts,
my master would perceive its relevance,
would see his own mechanicality.
In fact right now he’s in the public house
asleep despite the morning’s passing hours.
He starts his drinking earlier each day.
From wine he is in an unconscious state.
“My master will not hear Pythagoras,
and neither would he listen if he could.
Each day when he awakes, habitually
he stuffs some cotton in his ear canals
so that nobody’s words disturb his peace.”
Kakvas
