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Poetry By
Nora Delaney
Learning
Outside my window is a big, black crouching cat
of metal. Actually, it's a stabile - stationary, opposed
to mobile. By Alexander Calder. From here, I cannot
see the title. But to me it looks like a crouching cat -
sinuous, muscular - all paws and ears.
Not the kind of cat I would need to clear
the apartment which is now plagued with mice;
I hate laying the sickly glue traps for them - to hear
the squeaks that pierce my dreams
at night. And outside that big, cold cat
keeps watch, eyeless. Inside, the mice die terrible
deaths, like flies, on sheets of glue.
But it - the art - is not a cat: it morphs
when I know its name: "La Grande Voile" -
"The Big Sail". A paradox: sailing and
stationary. No matter. It is still a cat
to me.
And the mice will still be mice. The rats
outside still rats. I will still be me, but
now with new knowledge: a name -
"La Grande Voile".
I watch it arch its back, fill its sails.
Not moving in the wind that pushes
tiny people on their way.
Perhaps I will stop someone - a tourist,
a passer-by - and reveal my little ounce
of glee - not that mice die at night
in my apartment.
But that I know a sculptor's name.
And his art. And what
it means to me.
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