“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
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.