Classic 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.