Your dog, tranquil and innocent, dozes through
our cries, our murmured dawn conspiracies
our telephone calls. She knows—what else can she know?
If in my human arrogance I claim to read
her eyes, I find there only my own animal thoughts,
that creatures must find each other for bodily comfort,
that voices of the psyche drive through the flesh
further than the dense brain could have foretold,
that the planetary nights are growing cold for those
on the same traveler who want to touch
one creature-traveler clear to the end;
that without tenderness, we are in hell.

Adrienne Rich, Twenty-One Love Poems X