Rat

There is a corner in some foreign field

Perpetually dug by historians,

Like Evans, or Carter, they crave a yield,

Anxious to turn-up Australians

And there’s no telling what or fancying that

But to keep digging, till you find a rat.

—

Wishes are horses, bourses are courses,

In what is sealed-up, we pry,

But try getting hacks to reveal sources

Or say where the best bodies lie.

You’ll never see the best bones set on the mat

And can’t turn up truffles, for the smell of a rat.

—

Well may seal stones lay in the room,

Green, carnelian, amygdaloid,

Style the dirt pit a Minoan tomb

And fall, grave-robber, into the void:

Agamemnon’s death mask may well squash flat

But that’s in Mycenae, and I smell a rat.

—

Here’s the dried skull of some bovine stray,

Lined and carved in a dark, grand pattern

That wandered-off message, some sunny day

Subsumed in its helix, a ring of Saturn

Or if not an ice crystal, a startled cushat

Fearing propinquity to the gagging rat.

—

Hunt and collect in your orange cravat;

You’re never more than a yard from a rat.