I do not need to
Travel to California
To be struck by the low reek
From skunks,
Those striped creatures
Condemned by Jesuits as:
‘Not worthy to be the dogs of Pluto.’*
Here that crepuscular
Scavenger of the dusk
Lifts its too-proud tail
To squeeze
A malodorous attack
Upon us both:
‘The sin smelled by Saint Catherine
Must have had the same vile odor’**.
‘Hold your nose,’
I suggest to my wife,
But the foulness
Is already there,
Inside.
* **Thwaites, Reuben Gold, ed. (1633–1634). The Jesuit Relations and Allied Documents. Travels and Explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries in New France 1610—1791. VI. Quebec.