Pink Dog Elizabeth Bishop [Rio de Janeiro]* The sun is blazing and the sky is blue. Umbrellas clothe the beach in every hue. Naked, you trot across the avenue. Oh, never have I seen a dog so bare! Naked and pink, without a single hair... Startled, the passersby draw back and stare. Of course they're mortally afraid of the rabies. You are not mad; you have a case of scabies but look intelligent. Where are your babies? (A nursing mother, by those hanging teats.) In what slum have you hidden them, poor bitch, while you go begging, living by your wits? Didn't you know? It's been in all the papers, to solve this problem, how they deal with beggars? They take and throw them in the tidal rivers. Yes, idiots, paralytics, parasites go bobbing in the ebbing sewage, nights out in the suburbs, where there are no lights. If they do this to anyone who begs, drugged, drunk, or sober, with ot without legs, what would they do to sick, four-legged dogs? In the cafes and on the sidewalk corners the joke is going round that all the beggars who can afford them now wear life preservers. In your condition you would not be able even to float, much less to dog-paddle. Now look, the practical, the sensible solution is to wear a fantasia.* Tonight you simply can't afford to be a- n eyesore. But no one will ever see a dog in mascara* this time of year. Ash Wednesday'll come but Carnival is here. What sambas can you dance? What will you wear? They say that Carnival's degenerating --radios, Americans, or something, have ruined it completely. They're just talking. Carnival is always wonderful! A depilated dog would not look well. Dress up! Dress up and dance at Carnival! -- Rio de Janeiro: famous for its uninhibited Carnival celebration leading up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent in the Christian calendar, as well as for its beaches and its beggars. fantasia: carnival costume mascara: a mask (Arp 81)

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