Carl Rakosi’s “The Experiment with a Rat”:
The Experiment with a Rat
Every time I nudge that spring
a bell rings
and a man walks out of a cage
assiduous and sharp like one of us
and brings me cheese.
How did he fall
Into my power?
Selections from Jim Harrison & Ted Kooser’s “Braided Creek.” This volume of poetry began as pieces included with letters or simply mailed to each other and subsequently gathered together without noting who wrote which.
On every topographic map
the fingerprints of God.
As a boy, when desperate I’d pray with bare knees
on the cold floor. I still do,
but from the window I look like an old man.
Mouse nest in the toe of my boot,
have I been gone that long?
The pigeon
has swallowed a fountain!
Listen!
With her brush, the artist
touches one part of her life
with another.
When a hammer sings
its head is loose.
Mirrors have always given the wrong
impression of me. So do other people.
So do I. Let’s stop this right now.
The face you look out of
is never the face
your lover looks into.
“What I would do for wisdom,”
I cried out as a young man.
Evidently not much. Or so it seems.
Even on walks I follow the dog.
What if everyone you’ve loved
were still alive? That’s the province
of the young, who don’t know it.
It’s nice to think that when
we’re fossils we’ll all be in the same
thin layer of rock.
I hope there’s time
for this and that,
and not just this.
I prefer the skyline
of a shelf of books.
Today a pink rose in a vase
on the table.
Tomorrow, petals.
The pastures grow up
With red cedars
Once the horses are gone.
[This slim volume finishes with the last two pieces.]
From Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”:
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
(Thanks, Jerome McGann for bringing this quotation to my attention.)
