HIGHLY DELIBERATE POEM

“Mother o’ mi-i-ine, mother o’ mi-i-ine,

Sweet as uh ro-ose in thuh spring-ti-i-ime”—

The man who bawls this song

Has the face of a spell-bound, hairless rat.

Entranced within a spotlight,

He borrows unconsciously

Another voice from despair.

The ordinary squeak of his life

Is paralyzed, and fear of death

Lends him a tenor voice

To supplicate the Catcher.

But the audience fails to understand

And makes flat sounds of glee

With hands ... Death, quietly

Disgusted at this blind approval,

Takes away the spotlight.

Now safe, the rat presents

Jerks of gratitude and scampers off

To gnaw at his wife within their dressing-room.

That squeezed-in bag of piteous

Mythologies described as heart

Has opened in one thousand people

And received a vision

Of past solicitude for other bags.

The rat repeats this feat and wins

Varieties of coarse sweetmeats.

At sixty the rat will be a gorged

Machiavelli, wondering

Whether he has not blundered.

Death finds no interest in killing rats

And often allows them to live,

Preferring instead the less buried souls

Of a poet or a child of ten.

But the rat has found a fear

Within the second eyes of whiskey

And relates it to his wife.

“Say, May, this thing is funny!

You won’t believe me, but tonight

Just before I started the act

I felt like I was gonna die.

What in hell is wrong with me?

This booze must be drivin’ me bughouse.

Well, move a leg, and get that thousand

Faulkner promised you, and stop

Sitting there and staring at me.”

Death, who has listened with fastidious

Ennui, strolls off to slay

A negro infant newly born.