Plundered Hearts by J.D. McClatchy

separate
        The Good from the Bad, to weigh the soul …
    Soon enough you’ll fall from grace and be nicknamed
        Pamela the Enchantress or Tool
    Of the Trade. Silliness is the soul’s sweetmeat.)
                             One after another now,
                             Doors closed on men in bed with
                   The past, it was three flights to
                   His room, the bedroom at last,
    The goal obtained and
    So a starting point
        For the next forbidden fruit—the taste
    Of apricots and ripe gruyère is on the hand
        He licks—the next wide-open mouth
    To slip his tongue into like a communion
                             Wafer. The consolation
                             Of martyrs is that the God
                   For whom they suffer will see
                   Their wounds, their wildernesses.
    He’s pulled a fresh sheet
    Up over himself,
        As if waiting for his goodnight kiss
    While the naked boy performs what he once did
        For himself. It’s only suffering
    Can make us all more than brutes, the way that boy
                             Suffers the silvery thread
                             To be spun inside himself,
                   The snail track left on lilac,
                   Its lustrous mirror-writing,
    The mysterious
    Laws drawn through our lives
        Like a mother’s hand through her son’s hair …
    But again nothing comes of it. The signal
        Must be given, the small bedside bell.
    He needs his parents to engender himself,
                             To worship his own body
                             As he watches them adore
                   Each other’s. The two cages
                   Are brought in like the holy
    Sacrament. Slowly
    The boy unveils them.
        The votive gaslights seem to flicker.
    Her dying words were “What have you done to me?”
        In each cage a rat, and each rat starved
    For three days, each rat furiously circling
                             The pain of its own hunger.
                             Side by side the two cages
                   Are placed on the bed, the foot
                   Of the bed, right on the sheet
    Where he can see them
    Down the length of his
        Body, helpless now as it waits there.
    The rats’ angry squealing sounds so far away.
        He looks up at his mother—touches
    Himself—at her photograph on the dresser,
                             His mother in her choker
                             And her heavy silver frame.
                   The tiny wire-mesh trapdoors
                   Slide open. At once the rats
    Leap at each other,
    Claws, teeth, the little
        Shrieks, the flesh torn, torn desperately,
    Blood spurting out everywhere, hair matted, eyes
        Blinded with the blood. Whichever stops
    To eat is further torn. The half-eaten rat
                             Left alive in the silver
                             Cage the boy—he keeps touching
                   Himself—will stick over and
                   Over with a long hatpin.
    Between his fingers
    He holds the pearl drop.
        She leans down over the bed, her veil
    Half-lifted, the scent of lilac on her glove.
        His father hates her coming to him
    Like this, hates her kissing him at night like this.
THREE DREAMS ABOUT ELIZABETH BISHOP
I.
    It turned out the funeral had been delayed a year.
    The casket now stood in the state capitol rotunda,
    An open casket. You lay there like