RUTH DANON
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Mouse 1

“Nothing is simple,” said the mouse,
and spoke as though he had been
listening the whole time. Nothing
I had said til then seemed worth
repeating or remembering, but once
I got home the potential was end-
less. This confinement, the mouse
was saying, was getting tiresome.
He wanted out. I wasn’t surprised
at all but thinking up a few pearls.
These held me back. Walking
around my own home as if it were
someplace else, the mouse’s home
for instance.  The mouse wouldn’t
shut up, kept talking and talking
and I thought well, this is one
way to pass the time.
                                    You can
get used to anything, they say.
(That’s the mouse talking). Time
and again, down in the tube, in
the subway I am troubled by heat
and noise and my own bad manners.
Excuse me I say but I don’t mean it.
I’m pacing a bit now and flushed
all over my face. There’s still
the mouse to think of, feeding him,
and cheese, and all that. My memory
fails at times. I used to remember
something about shells and caves, I
think, but all of that seems useless
now. I’ve got the mouse to think of.
And the tube and the night terrors
and anyone you look at long enough
will be happy to remind you
of neglected duties.
                        “Bored,” said the mouse.
“I wasn’t going to get into this
part, your dumb evasions, the sly way
you reinvent desire as a holding
pattern.” The mouse is my witness.
The mouse knows. I took off my shoes.
I had a bad dream. I carried the long
box down the long street. I did I did.
And that’s only the first part of the story.

Mouse 2

Nostalgia:
tulips in a vase,
that lyrical urn, that
dancing, all that
predictable suffering.
Some things won’t do.
Won’t do windows won’t
do death.
               (Bright idea,
to think you could
get out of it)

Face it:
this is the mouse talking.

The mouse has arrived,
so it seems. And has
something to say.
Once, mouse announces,
my father was a big man,
and alive, and now, who
knows? The mouse knows,
I think, but won’t tell.
Mouse is thirsty.
Good water, says the mouse,
lapping it up.

Mouse lives here, will not
get lost. Requirements few.
Few but subtle, a place to
enter, a place to leave.
Small openings will do,
bigger than a keyhole.
           Cozy, I say, nothing
grand. A mouse for god’s
sake my mother would say,
not a paternal mouse but a
small mouse with small paws
and ears, with mouse breath
and rapidly beating heat.
Oh, rapidly beating heart,
what stops you in your tracks?