Notes Toward a Lexicon of the Language of the Bear

I

In its own language its name means:

	I walk slowly on hillsides 
	and sleep with a bellyful 
	of pleasing berries,
	pink flesh, and brains

	I dream of love vulgar
	and gorgeous beside the rush
	of rivers born of glacial ice
	and I shun the times of no 
	plenty, when all is dark
	and white and the blossoms
	do not love the red fruit into being.
 
This is the simplest word in its language
and the first one it learns.

II

The bear does not have a word for regret
but the nearest equivalent would be:

	I am not proud		
	to have gone to the end of the world 
	and eaten garbage there
	in dumps among the naked and the thin
	when I could not last the winter. 

This word is often thought but seldom 
spoken among the strong.

III

If you want to say I love you
in the bearish tongue say:

	You need not fear me

and translated literally
the word for solitude is:

	This side of the mountain is mine.