John Updike - April 28, Iyengar I

I heard an interesting story on NPR the other day that talked about how the world-wide spread of the very common Norwegian (not from Norway) Brown rat, was entirely the fault of humans. Spread to every corner of the earth, tough little ones. We have a lot to answer for…So this piece made me laugh.

RATS

A house has rotten places: cellar walls

where mud replaces mortar every rain,

the loosening board that begged for nails in vain,

the sawed-off stairs, and smelly nether halls

the rare repairman never looks behind

and if he did would, disconcerted, find

long spaces, lathed, where dead air grows a scum

of fuzz, and rubble deepens crumb by crumb.

Here they live. Hear them on their boulevards

beneath the attic flooring tread the shards

of panes from long ago, and Fiberglas

fallen to dust, and droppings, and dry clues

to crimes no longer news. The villains pass

with scrabbly traffic-noise; their avenues

run parallel to chambers of our own

where we pretend we're clean and all alone.