Chapin City Blues

Humors of love aside, the mousetrap was our own
opinion of the mouse, but for the mouse
it was the tree of knowledge with
its consequential fruit, the true cross
and the gate of hell. Even to approach
it makes him like or better than
its maker: his courage as a spoiler never once
impressed us, but to go out cautiously at night,
into the dining room;--what bravery, what
hunger! Younger by far, in dying he
was older than us all: his mobile tail and nose
spasmed in the pinch of our annoyance. Why,
then, at snapping sound, did we, victorious,
begin to laugh without delight?

Alan Dugan (1923-2003) was an American poet. He received a few awards in his life including the Levinson Award from Poetry magazine, fellowship from Guggenheim Foundation, and the Prix de Rome from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He kept it simple with his collection titles starting with his first book Poems in 1961 and his last Poems Seven: New and Complete Poetry in 2001. Dugan was also selected for the Yale Series of Younger Poems, where you can read this poem in its entirety.