Bagatelles from Brooklyn

Of Mice, Monkeys and Men

What is it about monkeys, mice and misery?

You want to scream or turn somersaults, to leap

from branch to branch, or cower in the corner

of your cage, or make a speech of jibber-jabber.

Animals are not people because they cannot descry

their chances in a thousand years or keep

to themselves their expectations of death, nor

hope against hope that what they dream will slabber

into tomorrow’s meal or mate, or make a speech

or declaim an oratorical excuse for who they are,

or just about anything they cannot drop or reach;

in other words, they never daven, shuckle or

mumble over a mezuzah on the door.

We can’t squeal like them, like us they cannot screech.

There is something about a mouse-trap that makes it so

endearing, enduring, intriguing—or even about cheese

that links us with those so fascinating critters,

that takes the mickey out of us, a blow

to our self-esteem, and makes our blood freeze,

yet times have changed since then, and one who fritters

away the hours playing with a mouse

has no tale to tell and cannot form ideas.

The very thought of what’s to come for us

Gives me something more than metaphoric jitters:

Anyone who wants to know or how to know

Has nowhere else to go, unless it is the slow

And tedious but time-tested process in libraries,

Book by book, word by word, row by row,

Gently down the stream, until the dream is through.