I was angry when the dog pulled my copy
	of The Genealogy of Morals off the table
And chewed on it for half a day in the alcove
	before I found out. I managed to drag
One sentence out of his slathering jaws—
	Of necessity we remain strangers to ourselves—
And found the utterance uncharacteristically 
	damp for Nietzsche. The rest of the book
Was inside the dog, and you know what that means:
	He had swallowed We are noble, good, beautiful, 
And happy!—swallowed it whole, dumb mutt—
	and I knew I’d find it on the lawn in a day or two,
Alongside Nothing is true, everything is allowed.
	He was digesting that one at this very moment,
Thereby undoing four hundred dollars’ worth
	of dog obedience class. I tell you I was furious.
It was my favorite book, I’d owned it for decades,
	its marginalia traced the history of my conscience.
But I coaxed him out of hiding, I gave him a cookie,
	I stroked his ears and went on reading Nietzsche
In my head (Each one of us is farthest away from himself).
	I could not punish a dog for only doing
The same thing I had done, but more quickly and completely.
	This satisfied Nietzsche, who scratched my belly,
Threw a ball across the room, and stood with his hand out, waiting.