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Oh, I should read
this-- this one's--

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Michael Cuddihy
published this poem

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and said nice things about
it, so I'll read it, too.

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It's called "Prosper
in the Twilight."

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The rat makes her way up the
mulberry tree, the branches

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getting limber and risky
up close to the fruit,

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and she slows.

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The berry she is after--

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I should tell you Christopher
Smart was a famous mad man.

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Almost all of his
life they kept him in,

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and this is in the 18th
century where they kept people

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with mental trouble in chains
and beat them and tortured

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them.

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It's the line, "they tortured
me with harping irons, which

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is a barbarous practice for I
am more unguarded than others."

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He wrote every day two lines of
poetry, one based on the Bible

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and then one an
answer to the Bible.

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He wrote the greatest
cat poem ever written

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to his cat, Jeffrey, as
part of this long section.

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In one section he's
talking about colors.

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He talks about all
the different colors.

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There's a quotation from
it about what he says

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about white and about purple.

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Wonderful, gentle,
ineffectual, brilliant man

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who had a sad life.

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The rat makes her way up the
mulberry tree, the branches

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getting limber and risky
up close to the fruit,

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and she slows.

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The berry she's after is so
ripe there's almost no red.

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He thinks of
Christopher Smart saying

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purple is black blooming.

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She lifts her mouth to
the berry, stretching.

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The throat is an elegant gray,
1,000 shades, Christopher

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wrote, among the crazy people.

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1,000 colors from
white to silver.

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