Keep your long rat-whiskers sleek
The man with garden shears may die next week
Next month, yet maybe come with fist and claw
With fuses primed in a Beethoven score
And dynamite ensconced in crated butter.
You do not even hear them mutter.
They watch you pace (from behind a shutter)
See you preen your whiskers as you walk
Twirl your truncheon, chew your rind of pork
Watch a drunk negotiate the street
(Correctly). You glance at the callbox of your power
Blind to their refusal of defeat
As they debate on when to name the hour.
King Rodent reigns on OGAD demock-rats
On water rats that watch each riverbank
And bridge for criminals who do not thank
King Rodent’s riddance of white leopard cats:
They wait until the shadow’s leap
Becomes an offer of a well-aired bed
That does not promise them a life of sleep.
King Happiness has waved his magic wand
Shown you a smooth reflection in the pond
Of television shows, recorded your own voice
In the self-selections of your choice,
Set up his directions on the street
Turned mechanic to your motorbikes
Poured patriot sauce upon your luncheon meat
Sent you out on Sunday-morning hikes:
Party-hatted happiness is here,
Each tenet brayed by a Royal Chanticleer.
6
Death is not preferable (had you
Considered it?) to this untrue-
To-life and that man’s sweated brow.
How could, an end called Death
End this as easily as that
Man thinks? Questions come
From artesian springs
Labyrinths of sea and soil
Making question marks
Out of eternal water
Demanding bloody answers
And a bloody year
Of cleansing. Slaughter?
Here comes the First Battalion
Television Light Infantry
With bayonets fixed –
Break them down!
Around the left flank come
The Porno Paper Cavalry Corps
Riding pink and yellow tanks –
Cut them off!
Under your feet spring
The Rat-State Sapper Brigade:
Dig them over like a garden
Do not let their forces overwhelm you
Rather go insane before they
Force you to their ranks
Or kill you.
The pyrotechnic paranoia of the anti-rats:
Clean against dark
Light opposing Death
Tearing slide-rule and scalpel, pen and typewriter,
Scales of rat-justice, rat-precision,
Libraries recording rat-right and rat-wrong
Rats that nip away each toe
And suck the soles of too thin feet
Rats that eat your eyes like oysters
Spread false trails over burrowed hills
Swamp-rats wood-rats tree rats
Plague-rats, pet-rats, army and police-rats
Sadistic rats that will not kill
Kind rats that drug you in the night
Rats that let you crush them in the garden
Run across your path
Climb trees before you see them
Eat corn that would give you the strength to kill them
Rats that laugh, rats that fill the night with infants crying
Rats that gloat, rats that bend your life before them
Rats that move around you in the night
Rats invisible that ring you during day
Rats in books, on radios, in tins of food
On television screens, rats behind
A million miles of counters
Wielding guide-books, tables, catalogues
Slide-rules, stethoscopes, maps
Election registers, passports, insurance stamps
Death certificates, prison records
Visas, references, forms to sign
Case histories, birth certificates
Statistics, interview reports
Personality tests, loyalty rating
And knives to cure
The pyrotechnic paranoia of the anti-rats.
7
The city is seething with discontent
For they all wonder where the deserters went:
They took no beer and they took no bread
And everyone says that they must be dead:
Some speak with anger (a few speak with tears)
But most out of vague speculatory fears
That they still live among us, active and thin
Or are out in the wilderness about to dig in
And return to besiege us when winter has fled.
The deserters are waiting without beer or bread
Around ancient fires of obstinate coke,
And they laugh in the city and wonder who spoke
When the wind lifts a flame from wilderness fires
(Caught in snowlight — quickly expires)
They look up and listen from parlour debates
Then resume their relinquished sensory states
Within and without their crumbling walls,
Like jungle tigers secure in their night
When the forlorn bark of the jackal calls.
8
Behind the rat-horizons of the world
Try to decipher what history has hurled
Against the white range of your exposed spine;
Sit in your isolated jungle and define
(Among pine-needles and a flask of wine)
Your lack of Revolutionary fire
Love of safety (number one desire)
Happily tied to the waterwheel
For irrigation that will soon congeal
Blood in brain and arms, will sit you still
And quiet while the busy rats distil
Sweet liquor as a chaser for each pill
That saps away the flame of heart and will.
You found it hard to struggle for house and bread
To hone a sword and guide a plough
Found the ache too much for your tread
From one loaf to another, held your head
Low because you killed the man who stood
Before you for a faggot of dry wood.
Sailing from one coast to another grew
Wearying. You wanted women and a mild brew
To dull what wits the day’s work left sound,
To sleep your life out on dry ground
Find a warm hut and a midnight glow,
A woman clothed in black from head to toe.
Sling, spear, plough, lathe and pen
Made artificers of house and den
Weighed power on scales and gave books of law
To save you from the blight of fang and claw,
Until this comfort to Utopia goes
Beyond a golden mean and throws
Us into progress where perfection flags:
Scarecrows beneath banners of atomic rags.
Like Zeno’s arrow the motion is but sure:
From good to bad or bad to good:
No ship stood in stillness pure
Moved north or south in flood-
Tide and wild wind, or smartly drove
Its mainsail back to struggle and song
After a doldrum residence wherein wove
Sea-dolphins — opium to the eyes in long
Performance. Either move,
Or the sea swells into another form,
Little choice between calm and storm.