Sleekit Cowrin' by Sharon Olds When a caught mouse lay dead, for a week, and stuck to the floor, I started setting the traps on a few of my ex's and my old floral(花的,植物的) salad plates. Late one night, when I see one has sprung, I put it on the porch(门廊,走廊) , to take it to the woods in the morning, but by morning I forget, and by noon—and by after- noon the Blue Willow's like a charnal roof in Persia where the bodies of the dead were put for the scholar vultures(秃鹰) to pick the text of matter and the text of spirit apart. The mouse has become a furry barrow(搬运架,古坟) burrowed into by a beetle striped in stripes of hot and stripes of cold coal—head-first, it eats its way in to the heart sweeter than dirt, to the mouse-bowels saltier, beeswax and soap stopped in the small intestinal(肠的) channels. And bugs little as seeds are seething(浸透,煮沸) all over the hair, as if the rodent(啮齿类的) were food rejoicing. And the Nicrophorous cuts and thrusts, it rocks and rolls its tomentose(被绒毛的) muzzle(枪口,动物的口鼻) , and its wide shoulders, in. And I know, I know, I should put my dead marriage out on the porch in the sun, and let who can, come and nourish of it—change it, carry it back to what it was assembled from, back to the source of the light whereby it shone. |