In *Maldoror and Poems,*
the French poet Lautréamont wrote about holy yearning
disguised as mournful complaint.
"Whenever you hear the dogs' howling in the fields,"
his mother told him as a child,
"don't deride what they do:
They thirst insatiably for the infinite,
like you, me, and the rest of us humans.
I even allow you to stand at the window
and gaze upon this exalted spectacle."
